We are by now used to the likes of Oliver Stone and Sean Penn — who themselves live, quite literally, like Medici princes — spewing endless neo-Marxist drivel like sophomores at a four a.m. reefer klatsch. (Most recently, Stone has unleashed upon the public the eponymous Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, a work best described as “Stalin porn.”)

Perhaps more significantly we are used to the giant leftist hypocrisy of supporting supposedly exploited Third World nations that themselves espouse and seek globally to expand virtually everything leftists claim to abhor (misogyny, homophobia, theocracy, etc.). Go figure.

But the Right is guilty of its own kind of hypocrisy. It’s interesting how some of those who most vociferously object to government interference in our economic affairs are most desirous of government interference in our personal ones.

I’m referring of course to social conservatives, who want to legislate our morals and values according to their views.

To be clear, I am quite sympathetic to the social conservative argument on abortion. Life, it appears to me, does begin at the moment of conception. (I can’t think of another time.) And at whatever phase of pregnancy an abortion occurs, a choice must be made between human lives, a horrible, and perforce immoral, situation.

I am less sympathetic to the social conservative position on same-sex marriage, which seems to me a civil rights issue.

But hold your tongues (and you blog comments) for a moment. Arguing my positions on these issues is not my intention here.

My point is: The social issues, whatever your position, are best dealt with outside the governmental realm.

I realize this is an unattainable goal and that government will always intrude in our private lives to some degree, but we must fight against it as much as possible for several reasons.

To begin with, social conservatives will be vastly more successful at having their views accepted if they make their case extrinsic of government.

Don’t believe me? Well, most of us remember “Mind your own beeswax!” from grammar school. That made an impression for a reason. People resent intrusion in their private lives to the extent that they often will do just the opposite of what was sought or recommended. Generally, people don’t want anonymous others, folks they barely know, the government most of all, telling them what to do about matters that are extremely personal. They would prefer to hear that from close friends, family, clergy and healthcare professionals they know and respect. Wouldn’t you?

This is a great part of the explanation for why the Republican/conservative side lost in the election, although the popularity of the pro-life position has grown considerably since the 1970s. Democrats may hold the nanny state prize for our economic lives, but Republicans were given the nanny state prize for our private lives. We are the busybodies.

Unfair? Sure, considering the idiotic intrusions of the likes of Michael Bloomberg who wants to tell us how much soda pop we can drink. Also, because we’re really not, at least not most of us.

But the perception is real, especially among women. The rise of the bogus women’s issues during the campaign around such absurdities as free contraception (how about free cigars?) were made possible by this same perception.

Republicans have been losing the (majority) women’s vote for years and it is only going to get worse if we don’t take the social issues off the table and put them back where they belong — at home.

439 Comments, 130 Threads

Other than abortion on demand, and the newly reconstructed/destructive definition of ‘marriage’, it is best to leave gov’t out of most social issues. However, when it comes to life and death ones, such as killing the unborn and destruction of the family, this is a valid line not to cross.

So, if Conservatives want to beat the Dems they must concentrate on sticking to limited gov’t – making sure the FEDS are basically little more than pipsqueaks to State governance – and mostly stay out of everyone’s private lives.

It is a far cry to want DOMA to prevail, from screaming atop the rooftops that what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms is anyone’s business, conservatives included. It just isn’t our business.

It is imperative not to give the radical left any more ammunition, let them choke on their own vomit. Instead, offer viable, alternative Conservative policy prescriptions, in tandem, with requisite ‘go to’ addresses (media, cultural, educational) to effectuate them. Time to take the reins back from the revolutionary radicals, as they have a death grip on these most important institutions.

Let us turn their leftist down upside its head and hammer them with it -http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/01/leftist-dogma-the-same-world-over-freedom-loving-people-beware-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki-32-2/

It can be done but it requires heavy lifting. NO time like the present.

Not to seem skeptical about this meme, but conservatives did not manage to break through the hammerlock the liberals had on government until Reagan forged his famous coalition: fi-cons and so-cons and mi-cons together, united against a formidable pandering foe.

Now you and Bret Stephens and others would like to shatter this coalition. I’ve got news for you. Southern and Midwestern Christian, middle-class voters don’t particularly care about preserving low tax rates for the rich, but they do care about values.

What actually hurt Romney was not his stand on social issues (about which he said very little) but the fact that he was a rich man running on a platform of reducing tax rates for the rich. This left him open to devastating attacks by the most effective class warrior since FDR.

Precisely, Darcy. The only rock solid ingredient of the GOP is social conservatives, so every election cycle after a lame candidate gets beaten, the Simons and other like minded liberals in rehab blame the values voters. Obama got re-elected by a slim margin by a stupid cohort of minorities , urban educated idiots ,union members and a healthy dose of vote fraud.
Because a couple states voted for same sex marriage, let’s all run out and buy some lavender accessories for our wardrobes. Maybe now that’s it’s been defeated in Germany, we can try to champion bestiality in the USA. That ought to add a couple sheep lovers to the big tent.
When the economy crashes on the head of the entitled little Lord Fauntleroy college students and the boys in the hood, we’ll still be what we are as social conservatives, people with principles.
Roger, you ought to push this campaign and see if you can drive Christians out of the GOP by 2016 and see if you and Dickie Morris can predict Hillary or which ever lib flavor of the year can retake the South and pull off a 50 state mandate.

Obama got elected by a margin of 4 million in the popular vote and 127 in the vote of the Electoral College.
In comparison, Bush won over Kerry by a margin of 3 million and 35 in the vote of the Electoral College.
(Amusingly but not surprisingly, in 2004 the Wall Street Journal said Bush was “given a mandate” with his victory; now it refers to Obama’s victory as “one of the narrower re-elections in modern times)

I’m not looking for an argument, because I really don’t think there’s any point to it. Bush 2004 gained 12MM more votes than Bush 2000 and gained 15 Electoral votes. Obama received 4.5MM less votes than Obama 2008 and lost 33 Electoral votes. That does not a mandate make.

Sadly, both R’s and D’s will attempt to spin the facts to suit their ideology. Truth has been absent from the public debate for some time now and it is sorely missed.

Ever heard of the ACLU? They’re trying to get all Christians out of the USA, not just the GOP. Read a history, or art, or acheology book lately? What the hell is 60 BCE? What is 77 CE? We’ve (Euro-Christian white peole) used the Julian (after Pope Julius) calendar for 500 years with no problems that I’ve noticed. One day A.D. and B.C. have landed on the ash-heap of history. Having a Nativity Scene on the town square this year? No. Why? Think real hard and you can figure this out.

Actually, BCE and CE have been around much longer than you think, and are actually examples of creative ambiguity. Xians can read them as “before the Christian Era” and “of the Christian Era”, while non-Christians like myself can read it as “before the Common Era” and “of the Common Era”.

AD stands for “anno Domini” (in the year of our Lord). Unlike militant atheists, I have no quarrel with a Christian expressing allegiance to his faith in this manner but I cannot write such a thing knowingly without violating a fundamental precept of my own faith (namely, that G-d is One and indivisible and does not have ‘avatars’, in human form or otherwise). I believe that making non-Christians do so anyhow cheapens both your own faith and ours.

Also, by the way, while Julius Caesar did bear the title of ‘pontifex maximus’, he would have been most surprised to find himself declared a pope. The Julian calendar as devised by him (he introduced the 11th and 12th month, as well as the leap years), BTW, counted AUC (ab urbe condita, i.e. from the founding of The City [=Rome], ca. 753 BCE). The count was shifted 753 yeas by a church father centuries later.

Think you might be mixing up your calendars a bit. Gaius Julius Caesar was many things, but Pope wasn’t one of them. The Julian calendar reset and adjusted the start of the new year and counting of months in the Roman calendar, but left the year counting systems untouched. The Anno Domini method of counting years didn’t come about until much later.

The Gregorian calendar (After Pope Gregory XIII) would the the one from roughly 500 years back, but many countries didn’t adopt it until much later, with some not using it until the 20th century. Russian didn’t adopt it until 1918, which is why the “October Revolution” took place in (Gregorian) November.

As a side note, there was a Pope Julius who had a significant contribution to the calendar. Pope Julius I was the one who set December 25 as Jesus’ birthday.

Also, by the way, while Julius Caesar did bear the title of ‘pontifex maximus’, he would have been most surprised to find himself declared a pope.
–New Class Traitor

‘Pontifex maximus’ doesn’t mean ‘Pope’.

You’re wrong about much else in that post and this one too but I have left making those corrections to the student.

Now, to return to the topic at hand, I’m amused by all the libertarians who take a whole lot of existing government interventions in the name of “social issues” for granted. Affirmative Action is a social issue, let’s see the social issue phobics quash just that one before fiddling with marriage. And employers paying a man supporting a wife and kids more than single mothers is also a social issue. And landlords choosing not to rent to people with kids, or pets, or couples shacking up is… wait for it… a social issue.

Libertarians, whether hard-core or soft-core types like Roger L. Simon, talk a good game about opposing government action on “social issues” but don’t really walk the walk.

One would think that former Liberals lecturing how Conservatives can win by giving up a large section of their principles would first want to read Ronald Reagan’s 1977 speech “The New Republican Party” before giving their lecture.

Prior to the rise of Ronald Reagan’s Conservatism the Social Conservative voter existed within the Democrat Party-ironically, it was these Social Conservatives who drove many of the civil rights issues of the 1960s.

And if we are to win elections by giving into what younger people think is the best way to go then consider the fact that younger people by and large support Obama’s Fiscally Liberal policies, the very policies which are robbing them of any opportunity to achieve economic prosperity.

lastly; the Gay Marriage issue is an artificial construct created by the Progressive Left to undermine the foundation of the Father-Mother family structure which is a necessary component to a civil and functioning society. The Gay-Marriage Equality argument is a legal fallacy since heterosexuals are not permitted to enter into marriage with a member of the same-sex while homosexuals are permitted to enter the contract of marriage with a member of the opposite sex; under the law there is no discrimination.

Don’t fall for the Leftist/Libertarian shell game. This is how getting the govt out of your bedroom works: one day sodomy is a crime; the next day quoting passages from the Bible speaking ill of sodomy is a crime. Notice that the crime remains, but it’s now the normal person who’s guilty, not the pervert. In a nutshell, this is how societies work. All societies, human and animal. There will be a comprehensive system of rules and morals – the ONLY question is, what will they be? See, if normal people tolerate anti-social behaviors, then their society will dis-integrate. It will be replaced by another society enforcing the behaviors that the ‘normals’ decided they had to tolerate. Traditional Western religions have always taught that tolerance is not a virtue but a moral failing. Now we have proof that this was correct, as traditional religious dogma has always proved to be when put to the test. The world record for a completely secular society is 70 years (the USSR). Not very impresive compared to Christian Europe.

The progressive certainly left hopes to exploit the push for gay marriage, but it didn’t invent that push. There are very practical reasons for same-sex couples to desire and need at least the civic union regime Roger puts forward. Inclusion in employer-provided health insurance. Inheritance rights. Survivor’s pension rights. Hospital visitation and durable power of attorney rights. Spousal immunity from testimony in court. Community property rights, including, in California, waiver of reassessment for property tax upon transfer by death of a partner.

Speaking of which, the recent Second Circuit case that went against the Defense of Marriage Act involved the surviving partner of a 42-year lesbian relationship/Canadian same-sex marriage socked with a $300,000 tax bill. That’s real world consequences.

Some of these rights can be asserted by contract, but they can be and sometimes are challenged by possibly hostile relatives; married couples routinely get the benefit of the legal doubt.

Aside from the occasional gold digger, who would marry someone to whom they’re not attracted just to get the legal rights and privileges that come with marriage? People pair up with and make mutual commitments to people with whom they’re in love and with whom they’d like to spend their lives in an intimate relationship. The right to marry someone of the opposite sex has no real world benefits for someone not likely to have such prospects, especially if they have someone they want to marry but can’t.

If you don’t study and comprehend the point of view of those with a different position, you will never convince them of your position. Proponents of same-sex marriage, whether they’re leftists or not, have been given good reason, by social conservatives, to think of social conservatives as not very nice people. They tune out social conservatives as mean-spirited people who want to throw up every possible roadblock to nice couples they know living happily ever after as they provide for each other’s security.

Too often, it leads them to believe they don’t dare vote for fiscal conservatives, when those fiscal conservatives are also social conservatives. I heard that so very often this past election season.

You make some good points. I think the way out is civil unions, where gays would have all the legal rights of marriage, but it is not called marriage, and is not done in any church, unless the church agrees. This allows socons to preserve traditional marriage, while giving long term committed gay couples the legal protections they need.

“Southern and Midwestern Christian, middle-class voters don’t particularly care about preserving low tax rates for the rich, but they do care about values.”

I care about values too. Specifically, I care about the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — and a government which understands that its proper role, as described in the Declaration of Independence, is limited to protecting such rights. I have essentially nothing in common with a “big government conservative” who wants to soak the rich while also imposing government controls over my personal life. I’d rather have Obama than someone like that who combines the worst of the left and the right. I voted for Romney specifically because he presented largely pro-capitalist positions and de-emphasized the social issues. The problem is that the leftist press and the idiotic rape comments by a couple of Senate candidates kept these issues front and center.

I am a Southern middle-class voter who finds values mightily important, particularly values like individual liberty. Trying to legislate morality is not much different from trying to regulate food choices and home heating decisions. Either puts govt in a place where it does not belong.

The GOP has two choices: either walk the small govt talk that is increasingly hard to listen to, or become Dem-lite.

Social conservatives are not using the power of government to restrict personal liberty. The left is using government to bludgeon Christians and others, attempting to coerce them into approving radical social change. All we are doing is saying “no, we refuse to call infanticide and buggering normal”. As far as Roe v. Wade goes, the hope has been that the regulation of abortion would be turned back over to the states.
Conservative , by definition, to me is attempting to preserve cultural heritage and the freedoms that brought us prosperity and opportunity. That is a Judeo- Christian philosophical foundation not some libertine anything goes moral anarchy.
What is Democrat lite is the Washington politicians and operatives who only want their turn to pillage and plunder the public purse. If Dick (aptly named) Morris and the amoral political whores who run campaigns are never heard from again, I’m fine with that. I see they’re floating Jeb Bush as their anointed candidate in 2016. Good luck with that one.
The “tax the rich” meme is a joke as the financial system heads for insolvency. Romney gallantly fought that battle right into the ditch, when he said “me too” to every Obama foreign policy fiasco in the last debate I knew then it was over, You would think with 300 million Americans, we could do better than empty suits and platitudes. Maybe not.

Excellent article, Mr. Simon. From many of the comments, though, it appears that your reasoning is falling on deaf ears. The social conservatives will continue to battle for the right to inflict their religious views over the rest of society, and by refusing to join with libertarian-leaning conservatives will ensure that extreme liberal views will increasingly control our society.

Darcy, hate to burst your pre-conceived bubble (looks like you have a BIG problem with Israel, but this blogger digresses..)but as an American citizen, voter too, and as a taxpayer no less, the dog in this fight is not only yours.

What has been lost in the debate is the fact that regardless of a law, government cannot force a church to perform a marriage. All gay “marriage” ceremonies will be performed at a courthouse or one of those churches where everyone has tattoos and nose rings.

The sweet revenge is that divorce law will apply and I can’t wait to see that.

Oh, it is here already. Mix in a little bit of child sex-abuse and custody battle to boot. I have seen it and it is NOT PRETTY. I would recommend everyone get to see a gay-divorce and custody battle before getting on the “gay marriage” bandwagon. Like all liberal “progessivism” this has MASSIVE and HORRIBLE unintended consequences. I know people HATE to hear the TRUTH, but there are things that we cannot just ignore or euphemize out of existence. Things like DECADENCE. things like SIN and DEGENERACY. The moral framework for society exists for a reason and those reasons cannot be legislated out of existence. Any compromise with the Devil is a victory for evil. Any compromise with radical liberalism is a victory for DEGENERACY, DECADENCE and DE-MORALIZATION.

I am with Roger here in part. We are losing this moral war. Our society is degenerating and fast. Government can support good moral constructs and that is what it has done in its legal marriages and incentives. Due to our moral decline it is time Government stopped supporting marriage. I say get rid of legal marriage completely. Now you have to have some legal binding to people for rights to estate, medical care, ect. So civil unions would be required. Anyone can be civilly bound to another but that is merely for legal rights for said purposes. TRUE marriage has always been a religious practice and only recognized by God so put it back where it belongs. Marriage in church under tradition of that religion. The religious lose nothing in this because the State is not the recognizer of union, God is. But the Gay rights movement dies completely and absolutely. Tax buy offs would have to change as well but I am sure Government can think of other ways to purchase your vote.

Abortion is not a religious/social issue. It is a moral and right to life issue. Continue arguing it based on constitutional rights of the infant much like the rights of live born children. Extend the constitutional rights of all to even the developing child. People have right to choose, yes. You chose a partner, you chose sex with him, you chose not to use protection (or it failed you knowing the risk). Now that you chose those actions you created another person with same rights to life. You can in no way interfere with his right as another to yours (murder a crime). your rights end at his rights, neither can negate the others. So your right to choose has been upheld but consequences of said right has now created a life with protected rights as well. Argue those lines and keep the social issues out.

Very well said. Marriage is a religious institution and should be the sole territory of religious institutions. Let the government enforce exiting and future marriages as civil unions and strictly through contract law and stay the heck out of religious sacraments and who is with who. That solves the whole marriage issue.

Abortion needs to stop being treated as a religious political football and be treated as what it is – a civil rights issue and eventually the civil rights of the unborn will be accepted as law.

The rest of the near totalitarian religious-Progressive (and it is absolutely a branch of the Progressive movement) agenda of controlling our bodies and ensuring that nobody has “too much” fun has to go. I won’t accept it and neither will over half of the country. Progressives are all about controlling the lives of the unwilling. Leftest Progressives want to control everything about our lives, bodies, and finances except sex and recreation. Religious Progressives want to control our bodies and our sex lives and ensure that everyone is just as SNL Church Lady repressed as they are. Both are equally Progressive and have no place in a free country until they give up their need to control the lives of others. Live your life the way you want to but stay the heck out of ours! The sad thing is that Religious Progressives are so anti-freedom that they will happily drag the Republican Party down into irrelevance before the’ll ever accept the idea of living in a free country.

That’s right Gov’t cant force a church to violate it’s concious with respect to… oh wait. HHS mandate requiring the Catholic Church to offer abortions and birthcontrol? How is a gay couple at a religious institution going to be treated? On the one hand, they get health care… on the other the Church would be complicit in recognizing the couple, and then gets sued for not offering healthcare…
This is already happening to Catholic adoption services in Boston (and other similar locals). They are having to close because they won’t put children in homes of gay couples. So much for the Gov’t not focing the Catholics (or others) to recognize, honor, and probably perform gay marriages.

AC, the Catholic adoption agency was functioning as a government contractor, using taxpayer funds to do so. They had been serving same-sex couples for years, and when the Vatican forced the issue, board members resigned in protest. The rule is simple: taxpayer money, taxpayer rules. The agency wasn’t “forced” to end their service, they chose to do so. They could have continued as a privately funded agency. Or they could have done what the San Francisco diocese has been doing, until forced to stop by the Vatican: cooperate with other agencies to provide alternative services to same-sex couples.

On the other hand, no church can be forced to provide its sanctuary or clergy for solemnization of a same-sex ceremony. Hasn’t ever happened, and won’t happen as long as the First Amendment exists.

Jake, what Roger refuses to acknowledge is that “civil right” is exactly the same as “entitlement”: once you have declared something to be either, then you have provided all the justification for government intervention necessary.

You might want to run idea past Archbishop Broglio and see if he agrees with you; the military archdiocese will be attacked first, since its Catholic priests attend to the spiritual needs of all soldiers’ faiths. Now that we have openly gay soldiers, they’ll want to get “married” in states where that’s legal. I don’t see this ending well.

Read the 1st Amendment.
The government cannot re-define a biblical term and make it part of the government. Marriage is defined as the joining of a man and a woman in the Torah. To steal this term and re-define this term is the ‘Dis-Establishing of Religion’.
When is the lawsuit going to be brought against the State and Federal Governments of this nation by the Churches and its members?

Next issue:
Slavery is against the laws of the land.
Obama now has the productive citizen providing all of the sustenance for those who will not produce. All working citizens are now by law forced to act as slaves for those ’47 percent’.
Does anyone see a problem with this situation.
Is anyone interested in a Class Action Lawsuit against the government. The government is taking the ‘Property of the working Citizen, his wages, without due process’. The 14th amendment says we all must be treated the same by the government.

The 1st Amendment calls for both the freedom of religion, freedom from religion and prohibiting the establishment of a religion by the state. It doesn’t deal with marriage at all. The use of language isn’t addressed either. If you want to bar non-religious folks or folks who interpret doctrine differently than you from using words coming from a different language and a different time, you would be forcing us to eliminate 95%+ of the English language as we know it. Theft of words from a religious source is no different than theft of a word from any other source.

I think you are reading much too much into the first amendment, and do not know your history. You should be aware that many states had state religions well after the constitution was ratified. That does not sound like freedom from religion to me. The first amendment only restricts the Federal government from having a national religion. I will admit that recent court cases have tended to imply that there is freedom from religion at much lower government levels. It should be obvious to the most casual observer that this is not the way the framers of the constitution intended it to be read.

You are both right, and completely wrong.
The First, like all of the Bill of Rights, originally did only apply to the Federal Government. Unfortunately for your argument, there exists this little thing called the 14th Amendment. Which, according to the Supreme Court, applies the rights enshrined in the Constitution to the states as well (Well, it’s a little more complicated, but that’s the basics of it).
As to the founders, who cares? The Constitution has been changed with the times, as they no doubt saw it would be (else they would not have put in the amendment process). Their opinion is irrelevant to the modern era.

The solution is civil unions, which function legally exactly like marriage, but have no religious component, and thus are not marriage, unless some church voluntarily agrees to perform it. The justice of the peace would perform civil unions, churches would perform marriages. Legally they would be equavalent, but religiously they would not.

No, it’s time to provide the Leftists with lots more ammo. Or, at least the soft-metal pointy end. The Founding Fathers finally decided to get serious about breaking away from England and removing the King as our ruler when they stopped signing petitions and picked up muskets and rifles to kill Redcoats and (more importantly for today) Tories and Loyalists. Sure, we fought the English army and navy, but we also got rid of “enemies… domestic” as they’d later be described in the oath all American Presidents swear, by lynching or exiling. As Tories were in the 1770s, so Leftists are today. Act accordingly, or quit griping.

“Hallelujah: William F. Buckley has Finally risen from the Dead”.
THANK you Jesus.

abortion/recreational-drugs/ANYthing occuring within the personage of one’s Skin.

having worked in the law enforcement community, i view the world as a set of Jurisdictions.

anything that happens in My skin, is ME. if an abortion is performed there, if a drug completely labotomizes my brain there, if ANYthing happens withIN my Skin….it is out of Your jurisdiction.

that’s the first Eggshell. it exists INside all the Other jurisdictional eggsshells. the Next eggshell is your HOME. in a Home, it’s not a Democracy. it’s a KINGdom. the kids are absolutely DEPENDant in the emporer and empress to provide for their needs.

no matter WHAT happens to the kids: the KING and the QUEEN have the power of Life and Death. not Pretty. just the way it IS …in a KINGdom.

if a BURGLAR should enter the KINGdom from the outside world, he is no LONGER in the Jurisdiction of the City/State/Country he USED to reside. that burlgar is DEAD. the KING has ORDERED it. and we OUTside that Jurisdiction, might as well be complaining about some guy who got shot to death with a speargun off the the coast of Bali, 400 feet under water.

it’s NONE of our Concern. it’s not in our Juridiction.

so far, we got an egg, the Jurisdiction of one’s personal Skin.
it resides INside ANOTHER egg, the Jurisdiction of one’s HOME.
and both are KINGdoms. that’s non-Negotiable. it’s GENETIC.

Next: OUTside those two egg-shells of Jurisdiction we have a Third Eggshell, and Fourth Eggshell, and a Fifth Eggshell: these are the Jurisdictions of City-Town, County, State, Country, Multi-Country-TREATY unit (such as NATO) and the United Nations (which is gaining INCREASE Jurisdictional AUTHORITY with ever new U.N. treaty RATIFIED by our U.S. Congress.

when we broke away from England, the Archbishop of Cantaberry called us “Government turned UPside DOWN”.

what he meant was: in the BIBLE, all authority came from TOP down. the KING was the big cheese.

it was unTHINKable, that a king’s SUBJECTS would ORDER a king to do ANYthing.
the subjects were serve-ANTS. the king was KING. the king was GOD on EARTH. St. Paul basically said that. “we are to SUBMIT to AUTHORITY, God has government give us ORDER, like he Orders the planets and the stars”. he said something quite Similiar anyway.

in the Thomas Jeffersonian scheme of things, UPside DOWN was the NATURAL order of things. all government BEGAN from a SINGLE jurisdiction unit: the INDIVIDUAL. government was inVALID, unless it has the CONSENT of the INDIVIDUALS it PROPOSED to govern.

Thomas Jefferson was NOT a Christian. he JOKED sometimes in personal LETTERS written to the Father of Organic CHemistry, Joseph Priestly, that some day the world would LAUGH at Jesus and Jehovah, like in HIS day, they LAUGHED at “Minerva” and old Greek oracle or godless.

CHRISTIANITY (and i am a Christian. but i cannot LIE for Jesus. just like i couldn’t commit RAPE for Jesus) only later HIJACKED our form of government.

i try to view God’s PREVIOUS actions in regards to Nations and Government. my Family came from Poland. my Grandmother, two Uncles, and and an Aunt were immates at Auschwitz. my Mother was a SLAVE for (i believe) SIX years in a Nazi labor camp near Meinz, Germany.

in POLAND…before the war and NOW, it was such a RELIGIOUS country, that streets were regularly named after the Saints. and it’s not Uncommon, just like in MEXICO, to see CHAPELS dedicated to JESUS.

there’s nothing HOLY about applying RELIGIOUS rules to a NON-religious population that you are under CONTRACT with: “TAXation without Representation is TYRANNY”.

and the BEST tyrants are already the DEAD ones. are you Willing to get LINE for THAT ?

and God does seem to PROTECT tyrants, EVEN if they engage in tyranny is HIS name. i mean, if i RAPED someone, but said: “JESUS…this is for YOU”; do you think MY life is gonna BETTER after that incident?

Jurisdictions. skin/home/city-town/county/state/country/MULTI-national-TREATY units. when ONE jurisdiction crosses the ‘county-line’ of Another, the INTERLOPER pays.

“welcome back to the World of the Living William F. Buckley Jr. ! GOD…we MISSED you !!!!!!”

please take that as the Greatest compliment one conservative could give another.

It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

I am in total agreement with Roger Simon, and find these warning comments about 19th century communism to be off topic. Capitalism itself is on the line, as I explained here: http://clarespark.com/2012/11/07/capitalism-is-on-the-line/. Social conservatives will drag us into full blown fascism at this rate.

Regrettably, the ad hominems began with Clare’s accusation that social conservatives are fascist. If you want babies not to be killed while they are being born, and if you want marriage to consist of what every civilization and religion since the dawn of history has said it consists of, then in her mind, you are a fascist. Maybe Clare could visit the National Holocaust Memorial Museum for a reminder of what true fascism is.

Same-sex marriages are recorded throughout history. Including by the early Christians.
You can claim it as a Christian tradition going back a thousand years or so, or an Abrahamic one going back in Judism for thousands of years. Beyond that, don’t make claims about other civilizations.

dcanner: there is no proof. Mr. Cross’s statement is the big lie. Just say something outrageously false often enough, and people will begin to accept it. The Torah says homosexuality is an abomination. Christianity inherited that from Judaism. Anyone who imagines there is toleration for homosexuality in dar al-Islam is dreaming. China? India? Japan? Where is the imaginary civilization of Mr. Cross’s conjecture? Nowhere.

“The social issues, whatever your position, are best dealt with outside the governmental realm”

Well, guess what Rog,
The “government realm” is where THE LEFT has brought them, and forced them down all of OUR throats, for the last 50 years.

Politically active Social Conservatives are only RESPONDING to leftist attacks, backed with Government Muscle, that force us through coercion and threat, to accept THEIR social positions inside our homes and families.

Responsibly spank your children, and see what Leftists will have the government do to you.

Responsibly oppose the unnecesarry sexualization your children, the subthe coercing of the girls to “give in” to the boys by handing out Condoms in the 5th grade, or object to having Homosexual Advocacy Specialists posing as “heath Instructors” and see what Leftists will have the Government (through the school board) do to you.

Adhere to your faith, and praise God for your good fortune as you speak as Class Valedictorian in a public school, and see what Leftists will have the Government (through activist judges shilling for the ACLU) do to you.

Propose a “normal” notification to Parents about Medical Procedures to be performed on their custodial Minor Children (The school nurse cannot give an aspirin, a dentist cannot fill a tooth) to their Ritual Sacrament of Infanticide, and see what Leftists will have the Government to your child, without your knowledge or consent.

Object, as a group, to tax-funded racist, anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian hate speech masquerading as “art” and see what the what Leftists will have the Government do to your organization..

Hire people based on skills and aptitude, without “bean counting” for the appropriate government mandated “rainbow” and see what Leftists will have the government do to your business.

The list goes on and on.
It the Left, Roger, always and damn near excusively THE LEFT that has used Government Muscle to enforce adherence to its agaenda on social issues.

Not the other way around.

Its only “devisive” and “hurts republicans” to be concerned about the Lefist stranglehold on the discussion of social issues, because the Lefist media says it is.

They are the Official Propaganda Arm of the Left Wing of the Democrat Party, defining and enforcing the manditory social AND political agenda OF The Left.

And like all Propaganda arms, just because “they” say its true, doesnt MAKE it true.

I can hear it now, “Natural liberty is a social issue, so stifle yourselves you icky social conservatives you!” Or even, “Shut up! Wife-beating is only a social issue…” And in an 1860 reprise, “Shut up! Human trafficking is a social issue…”

Beware. Anybody can play the game.

When you succeed in getting social conservatives to stay home, Ms. Spark, good luck stopping the Euro-Socialist agenda with the Libertarian Party (slogan, “We’re the other 1 percent!”) as your biggest political ally.

Fiscal conservatives without moral conservatives is what this past election was all about… and the reason for this article. Romney was pushed by the establishment GOP with the thought that social conservatives would swallow their “safe choice” rather than see obama win again. Some of us did but not enough. Romney was your capitalist without social conservative street cred. He didn’t win. That fact doesn’t scare me away from the GOP as much as their reaction- namely- now we have to change who we are- Let me be the first to say it- TIME FOR A NEW PARTY!

This should be the answer of every GOP candidate when asked about social issues: “My beliefs are well known, but I do not believe it is the government’s task to enforce them. Now, about the federal deficit and the economy…”

Of course, the flipside of this is: if you don’t want public resources to be used to enforce your beliefs, neither should they be used to enforce those of the other side (no subsidized abortion, no creating a ‘protected class’ out of a s3xual preference,…).

“Bring the state back to basics.” Even if you do believe that the state should do some stuff beyond what I call “night-watchman duties” (national defense, public law and order, border protection, international relations), as long as it cannot handle the essentials properly it should not concern itself with peripherals.

Roger: “…people don’t want … the government … telling them what to do about matters that are extremely personal. They would prefer to hear that from close friends, family, clergy and healthcare professionals…”

You’re too late. Social networks have outdated “close friends”, entitlements have destroyed the “family”, insurance and regulation has squeezed “healthcare professionals” into 5-minute-a-visit charlatans and the “clergy” has through long acquiescence and silence, like the Republican Party, gone 100% obsolete.

I would add that the only “protected classes” I approve of are children, the very old, the infirm, the mentally incapacitated. You know, those who can’t reasonably be expected to protect themselves and so are deserving of societal protection. And you can add animals to the list. I also believe the “pre-born” are worthy of protection. How to go about it in a manner consistent with my philosophical leanings is the question.

A very rational and appealing approach, NCT. However, as long as a high percentage of women continue to be selfish political and fiscal simpletons, e.g., taxpayer supported birth control as an entitlement, the left will continue to find ways to exploit them until it becomes undeniable that Democrats can’t govern.

A short term tactic might be to let Obama and the Dems run the economy for two years with Republican voting “present.” In return, the Repubs should demand that the Dems adopt a budget, end exemptions from Obamacare and, per Instapundit, “repeal the Hollywood tax cuts.” It is unlikely that the economy will suffer a great deal more than under a compromise, but the Dems will own the resultant mess. If the state of the economy at that point doesn’t convince some of the women in question, and some of the other fiscal illiterates, that social issues are momentarily trumped by the economy, then we are Greece anyway.

Thanks for the rational and appealing approach, NCT. However, as long as a high percentage of women continue to be selfish political and fiscal simpletons, e.g., taxpayer supported birth control as an entitlement, the left will continue to find ways to exploit them until it becomes undeniable that Democrats can’t govern.

A short term tactic might be to let Obama and the Dems run the economy for two years with Republican voting “present.” In return, the Repubs should demand that the Dems adopt a budget, end exemptions from Obamacare and, per Instapundit, “repeal the Hollywood tax cuts.” It is unlikely that the economy will suffer a great deal more than under a compromise, but the Dems will own the resultant mess. If the state of the economy at that point doesn’t convince some of the women in question, and some of the other fiscal illiterates, that social issues are momentarily trumped by the economy, then we are Greece anyway.

yep, i’m very sympathic to the so-con cause, i have fought on their side many, many times, i believe that our traditional is under attack from progressivists and progressive ideaology.

but the way we are doing this is NOT working, we are losing and losing BIG.

we need to change.

if we are truly committed to smaller, limited government then we have to go all the way and that is going to mean that we are going to have to accept some things we don’t like, things we don’t think are good or healthy, with the understanding that these things simply are not within the realm of governmental authority.

One basic American value has been tolerance of diverse beliefs – I can let you have your crazy opinion, and express it, so long as you let me have and express mine.
Perhaps the fight we most need to make is the one in defense of the language – e.g. civil unions are NOT marriages, etc. Drawing such distinctions, consistently and without deliberately-insulting adjectives, allows us to talk about and insist on making linguistic / conceptual differences into legal differences.
It’s a non-trivial fight – the co-opting of words’ definitions to eliminate conservative/libertarian concepts from the debate is a very old tactic of the left.

I agree, but would go further and urge that the balance between states and the federal government be returned to the original balance struck in the Constitution.

If the federal government stuck to the basics it was specifically charged with responsibility for, 99% of our problems would disappear overnight. Try as I might, I have failed to find any reference to abortion or gay marriage in that document.

This puts the responsibility for balancing out any social issues back upon the states and the citizens of those states – where it rightfully belongs.

If that were accomplished, even if someone wanted to enter a same sex marriage, they could simply emigrate to state that shared their views.

If those views are predominant, then other states will eventually follow that lead to keep from losing citizens and hence representation in Congress. If that view is not predominant, then the states have still successfully conducted an experiment under the principles of federalism to see what works, and the people of the various states have the type of government and society that suits their populations best.

There is real difficulty in trying to separate the law from morality. Morality is not derived from scientific research or deduced from universally accepted axioms. Most of our laws derive from the 10 commandments. Notice however that these laws are enforcement by the federal government. Murder(including abortion), theft, adultery and perjury are state felonies (except under special circumstances). Consequently they do not belong in a national election. Legislation concerning morality needs to be handled at the most local level possible. Gays are 3% of the population and tend to cluster among themselves in a few choice locales (San Francisco, provincetown etc.) . Consequently for many communities gay rights marriage is as relevant as broccoli consumption regulations are to esquimaux. Devolving gay marriage, abortion, marijuana to the states is not endorsing any particular side, it is upholding the constitution, in particular the 10th amendment, separation of church and state, and limited government.

As an aside I would point out that whereas the national media can definitely effect national elections, they aren’t so potent at the state and local level.

I agree with Roger that for national elections fiscal conservatism, not social conservatism, is the winning choice.

The press won’t allow candidates to stay away from social issues. They are running them. Hence, you have mental midget asking people about the age of the planet, rape and birth control. Even a refusal to answer is an answer for them.

Frankly, if conservatives don’t hold on to their social action values such as being pro-life, anti-illegal immigration, etc. we have nothing at all to stand for. The REAL problem are the fools running the republican party. These establishment idiots make Gilligan look like an absolute genuis.

Why do we keep losing? Just look at the brain dead RINO zombies running the GOP. All they know how to do is lose & look like democrats lite. The GOP are a bunch of moronic professional losers that couldn’t find their anal canal with a search party and a flashlight.

Bulgaricus,
Romney is probably the most personally socially conservative candidate we have ever had. I regret that he didn’t get the chance to demonstrate his principles over the next 4 years. I wish you luck as an independent, but I doubt that you will ever find the perfect candidate–unless you run yourself.

I agree 100% with you. Day after the election I changed my party registration to independent as well. If the Republicans can’t win this year against Obama with his track record, they are worthless as a party. Conservatives simply have no party, and are without cultural influence. Liberals dominate every major American institution, and have done so by purging them of conservative viewpoints. They determine what is debated, what counts as reasonable discourse. Both McCain and Romney accepted these constraints and lost. No talk of abortion, unless questioned, none of gay marriage, nothing on the social issues at all. No wonder they can’t win against Obama. Since the election, all that has been debated by Republicans is which of their principled stands should be discarded to “win.” Disgusting.

If you want something to stand for, read the frigging Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The Declaration in particular contains the most beautiful and concise description of the proper role of government that I have ever seen. It is preposterous to say that without their traditional abortion and immigration positions, Republicans have nothing they can stand for. How about standing for individual rights and limited government as a matter of principle?

How many seats will you win with your protest vote ? How many laws will get repealed or passed . Both us know the answer – zero. If you feel that politics is useless and it is time to engage in direct action that is one thing, but if you are just tired of losing and want to give up then “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen”

Roger is suggesting a way for conservatives, those who believe in the promise of the constitution, those who aren’t afraid of freedom and liberty for all, to win elections and restore our country to a constitutional republic. Constructive criticism would be more a lot more useful than defeatism.

“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

If social conservatives stay with the GOP while agreeing to sacrifice their political priorities, how many Congressional seats the party wins will be used for purposes that matter to them? Zero. How many GOP-led laws or repeals are likely to matter to them? Zero.

On the other hand, if social conservatives decide that there’s no point in voting GOP, that’s likely to amount to zero for the both of us. That’s scenario’s worse for you, but no skin off the nose of SoCons–they get nothing either way. Why throw you a rope?

If you believe that the single axis of freedom-coercion is the only fruitful criterion for politics, that’s your prerogative. But many people consider your stakes secondary, if not trivial: don’t bother retailing your rally-round-the-flag speech to anyone deeper than a libertarian (i.e., anyone who’s not a libertarian).

The flag waving quote is one Tom Paine wrote just before that libertarian nut Washington and his libertarian nut army crossed the Delaware and defeated the British at the battles of Trenton and Princeton.

Libertarians support abortion being a state, not a federal, matter (just as murders of older humans are) . Libertarians support cutting all federal funding for abortions. Net results: 1) fewer abortions 2) a chance to outlaw or significantly reduce the number of abortion in those states where the majority feel that abortion is murder . The same sort of argument applies to all the so-con issues. They aren’t federal issues, they are state issues. A republican party with a consistent message of states rights, freedom, adherence to the constitution, and smaller government can win and make things better. Not perfect. Better. Fewer babies will die (if that is our metric). That is not so-cons getting nothing. But if so-cons withdraw they get a lot worse than nothing. Even live birth babies (botched abortions) will die.
Libertarians are not leftists, they do not seek to destroy western civilization and free exercise of one religion. The left does.

The constitution offers a lot more than arid fiscal prudence, it offers freedom including the freedom to worship as you see fit. It offers a structure of government in which men of differing beliefs can live together in peace if they choose to. You never address feudalism at all . If a majority of the inhabitants of state A abhor abortion, while the majority of inhabitants of state B don’t care, wouldn’t it be better for state A to ban abortion and state B allow it ? Or is it the duty of state A to invade and conquer state B so that no unborn die ?
I believe things could get much worse in this country. Democrats cheat and would happily dispense with elections altogether. I further believe that while enough of constitutional government remains so that the fight is political we should try to win elections and make thing better, even all we can achieve is to make things a little better. Roger offers a way to do this. You have offered no such proposals at all . Do you offer no proposals to win because you don’t think things can get any worse ? Do you offer no proposals because it is too late for elections ?
If elections remain preferable to killing, what party will be your vehicle ? What will your platform be ? I know that you would outlaw abortions, making it a federal crime . Would there be exceptions for rape or for the health of the mother ?
Would adultery become a federal crime ? How about sodomy ? How about the dietary injunctions of Deuteronomy and Leviticus ?
What should we do to prevent America from becoming another failed socialist state ?

The constitution offers a lot more than arid fiscal prudence, it offers freedom including the freedom to worship as you see fit. It offers a structure of government in which men of differing beliefs can live together in peace if they choose to. You never address federalism at all . If a majority of the inhabitants of state A abhor abortion, while the majority of inhabitants of state B don’t care, wouldn’t it be better for state A to ban abortion and state B allow it ? Or is it the duty of state A to invade and conquer state B so that no unborn die ?
I believe things could get much worse in this country. Democrats cheat and would happily dispense with elections altogether. I further believe that while enough of constitutional government remains so that the fight is political we should try to win elections and make thing better, even all we can achieve is to make things a little better. Roger offers a way to do this. You have offered no such proposals at all . Do you offer no proposals to win elections because you don’t think things can get any worse ? Do you offer no proposals because it is too late for elections ?
If elections remain preferable to killing, what party will be your vehicle ? What will your platform be ? I know that you would outlaw abortions, making it a federal crime . Would there be exceptions for rape or for the health of the mother ?
Would adultery become a federal crime ? How about sodomy ? How about the dietary injunctions of Deuteronomy and Leviticus ?
What should we do to prevent America from becoming another failed socialist state ?

Healthy sperm can survive for as long as five days (perhaps longer) in the fallopian tube. If an egg drops within that time period, conception can occur. Or, if the egg is already present, conception can occur within 30 minutes.

The word “life” is not precise enough to have an intelligent debate about the subject of regulating abortion. A dog is “life.” A blade of grass is “life.” If you believe in a soul that is conjured at the moment of inception then you believe human life begins at conception. If you do not believe in a human soul then further analysis is required to identify the point at which there is a human life that warrants protection against the preferences of its host. Even those of us who lack faith understand that the status of human life is acheived long before the moment of birth. No question there. We agree there can and should be sensible regulation at some reasonably early stage. But tell us that point is at conception (or another point that effectively rules out all early abortion) and you lose us, and in our opinion cross into the Mind Your Own Beeswax region. (By the way, nice article Roger.)

(I’m going to try posting this again: it was rejected because, apparently, I was posting too quickly and often: NOT!)

TL, let’s think about barrier methods of birth control—and what happens in a petri dish. Why do billions bother?

Conception occurs at the union of the ovum and sperm: the DNA for a unique human being is set. Unless something interferes with the process, nine months later, or so, a baby is born—that unique human being who’s been present since conception. You and I are the same human being we were at conception, just in a different stage of life.

The contortions the dishonest supporters of abortion go through to try and justify their selfish and morally bankrupt stance amply prove my point. People like me have lost you, TL? How about you’ve lost us? Your argument is shallow and dishonest: how convenient to deny the humanity of the pre-born, at the earliest stages: you and I were once there. I’m very happy that my mother decided I was worth keeping as soon as she knew she was pregnant and I looked like a bean—a very small one. I guess you’re neutral on that as far as your own life is concerned: aren’t you?

(By the way, NOT nice article Roger: dissembling and very disappointing. I guess you haven’t noticed that it’s the progressives who have butted in everywhere—using the courts and any other means possible to jackboot their political opponents. That you then come down heavily on conservatives, who have lost just about every gerrymandered battle, is astonishing to me. Maybe I’ve got you all wrong . . .)

TL
“The word “life” is not precise enough to have an intelligent debate about the subject of regulating abortion. A dog is “life.” A blade of grass is ‘life.’”

This is silly. It’s not dog life or a blade of grass life that grows in the human womb. It is human life. At human conception, life is created. Something is growing and developing; and what is it that is growing and developing? A human being. It’s not a palm tree. It’s not a rose bush.

At some time in the future, society will look back on our society in horror that we engaged in the barbaric practice of killing our own offspring. This is an issue one thousand times more egregious, morally and ethically, than the practice of slavery. The first intent of slavery was not to kill anyone. The first and only intent of abortion is to kill. To kill is its only purpose.

A sperm is alive: an ovum is alive. When they join, life is not created because it already existed. Life does not begin at conception. Life began once. Ever since then it has been inherited.

Conception is called that only because it was the event that van Leeuwenhoek saw. Until then conception was a vague concept. If van Leeuwenhoek had known the full range of events after fertilization would he have named that particular event conception, or would he have named another event, such as cross-linking of the DNA, or implantation as the moment of conception? If he had named some other event as Conception, would you be saying life began then instead?

TL – it’s a “bright line” issue: at what point is there an unambiguous change of state from one thing to another, so clear and obvious that it can be defined and enforced to whatever extent is necessary in a consistent way by the admittedly bumbling and muddling tools of society? Conception is the best candidate for this bright line I can think of, and has the advantage of appealing to both many objective non-religious as well as most religious persons.

The replies to your comment suggest that this thread is devoted to finding a threshold at which life begins. Let me propose a marker that has not been cited by anyone else, to my knowledge: the beginning of a heartbeat. This takes place some 3 weeks after conception; is a clear, unambiguous, detectable sign of life; and provides enough time after the sex act for those having second thoughts to end the pregnancy. After that 3 week period – you have a beating heart and thus a clearly living being, beyond which abortion should not be permitted unless to save the mother’s life (possibly for rape and incest as well).

On one hand, you are right. Many social issues are best handled outside government. For instance, in Germany, abortions are legal, but there are time restraints–no late-term or partial birth abortions. There are also civil unions with only minor interest in calling them marriage. So giving in a bit on legislative control can cool the fervor of activists. NB: This doesn’t seem to work on green issues in Germany.

On the other hand, France is talking about getting rid of the words mother and father on official forms. In America, this would be turned into lawsuits against Hallmark for sellling Mothers Day cards. And in the US, feminists seem to want 13 year olds to have complete autonomy WRT sex and reproduction even though the same girls can’t legally drink a beer or drive a car. There does seem to be something different about our activists that doesn’t allow them to accept a moderate solution. Maybe it’s because they don’t have day jobs. At any rate, I just don’t trust them not to press for even greater changes through stupid court decisions that take us where no sane person on either side really wants to go.

One thing that bothers me about some religious conservatives is the way they talk about religion in their arguments. I have no problem with someone saying that his faith informs his position and then explaining how he has thought about a specific teaching and examined its relevance and wisdom in deciding a particular issue. Very often, input from different religions can deepen my understanding of my own beliefs and show that there is a universiality of important principles. I do have problems with those (noted sometimes in blog comments) who use a bible verse as their only argument. This simply turns off people instead of spurring them to think further about a complex issue. It comes across as trying to suppress rather than trying to convince.

The problem with using Christianity as the argument against same-sex marriage, is that the Bible doesn’t talk about same-sex marriage, obviously.

The Bible says that homosexuality itself is a sin.

So the clear message from the social conservatives is that they’re not just opposed to gays getting married. If the Bible is their rationale, then they’re likely also opposed to gays being gay. And that is not going to sell in a pluralistic individualistic society.

I’m not so sure the bible says homosexuality is a sin – acting on the impulse is. Pretty much the same as fornication and adultary. Lust seems to be the key here. Plus, I’m not in the camp that believes homosexuals can’t go to heaven. The bible is pretty explicite in that if you accept Christ as your Lord and Saviour then you are saved. Period.

The problem is that there are two groups of people who believe that Christians hate gays: the few who have met/heard someone like Falwell spout some ignorant opinion, and the many who have never met any social conservative, but get their opinions from television/movies (or more pure forms of leftist agitprop). When was the last time a so-con was portrayed as a person who had sincere beliefs and tried hard to live up to them, was ashamed when he fell short, and showed tolerance toward others who don’t believe the same way?

“So giving in a bit on legislative control can cool the fervor of activists.”

I’m not convinced of this. Sure, many people in the gay movement will be satisfied, but there will almost certainly be another, significant group that will continue to push the issue. They will come after churches who do not perform or recognize homosexual “marriage.” First they will start with non-profit status, and then they may go further. At least one party has shown it has no respect for religious liberty and freedom of conscience when it comes to pressing their social issues (i.e. the Obamacare mandate).

I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I expressed my belief that some people within the homosexual movement would attempt to use forms of legal coercion (taxes, specifically) in order to dictate how a religious group acts on its beliefs. No church or religious body (or really anybody) should be forced to perform homosexual weddings or recognize homosexual couples as “married.” I said nothing about interpretation of the bible. Were you even responding to me, or another commenter.

the pastor (I use the term loosely)of Westboro Baptist Church is a Democrat. They are a litigious cult of incestuous snakes and in no way represent Christianity. If you want to say they do, then I will counter with NAMBLA is the heart and soul of the gay rights movement.

If social conservatives were the main reason that Romney didn’t win, why didn’t the non-tea party/social conservative candidate Todd Akin (Mr. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”) win against the highly unpopular Claire McCaskill? Missouri has a huge number of Evangelicals. Why did Akin lose there?

I believe that the incredible disdain and antipathy shown by establishment Republicans towards the tea parties and libertarians (including Ron Paul) was the major reason for Romney’s loss. I believe that there were other lesser reasons, but that the major reason was this! I have voted straight Republican Party ticket for 40 straight years until this last election (even in 2012 I only deviated from Republican twice on a long Texas ticket). What changed me is Glenn Beck on Fox and all the follow-on reading about the history of Republican and Democrat progressivism.

That “huge” number is a perceptual issue. Evangelicals are rude and noisy and 17% of the electorate. They seem like a larger group than they are.

Social conservatives as a rule are terrible at math. In South Dakota (a red state if there ever was one, full of small town religious white folks) every election cycle the far right anti-abortion groups look at polling data — yeah the same polling data the anti-abortion crowd here likes to parade as if it’s meaningful — and conclude that the overwhelming majority of residents are against abortion. So what do they do? They have an anti-abortion measure on the ballot. And every cycle, whatever measure they have gets stomped. We’re not talking mere squeaker defeat. I mean STOMPED. And every cycle, they’re utterly confused.

What they don’t get — and what you don’t get — is that social conservatives are a noisy minority. Nature has parallels: they’re like a peacock fanning out or the 2 oz puffer fish who inflates itself to 20x its normal size so that it looks much bigger than it really is.

You forgot as a general rule, “Any guy on the internet with the username ‘randomengineer’ who claims that math can be your friend, will then just make up numbers, as a general rule.”

According to randomengineer, evangelicals make up just 17% of the voters. However according to a 2007 survey, 28.6% of the U.S. population identify as evangelicals. Since evangelicals are more likely to vote than most other groups, I doubt they only represent 17% of voters. Perhaps Mr. Math Is Your Friend could share his source for his numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism#Global_demographics

Well now, just listen to yourselves, ladies: ‘rude and noisy’ doesn’t begin to describe it. A more comprehensive list of words’n'checkboxes also needs spaces for ‘arrogant, ignorant, smug and stupid’ — a short list that can easily be used to take the measure of a many a God-bothered evangelical fruit-loop.

Prediction: take 100 at random and you’ll find more than 4 out of 5 score better than 65pc against that simple list.

The word ‘evangelical’ is certainly part of the problem: take another 100 self-identified evangelicals and ask them for a definition of what the hell the word means and you’ll get a lot of waffle and spit, and zero clarity. Yet in the next breath they will make a virtue out of ignorance.
Ditto a bunch of hate-powered black ‘ministers’ on the left.
Who needs any of it?

The problem, of course, with the Mind Your Own Business dictum is that the radical left is not listening. In the later half of the 20th Century until now, the left has waged a relentless campaign of lies, subterfuge, and PC enforcement meant to shame and silence the “moral and religious people” about whom John Adams said were necessary to the successful perpetuation of our Constitutional Republic. And you should read George Washington’s First Inaugural Address if you think J. Adams was alone among our Founders with such, ok, I’ll say it, decent ideas about our young country.

Social conservatives are the moral and religious people who present the only obstacle to the Constitution’s complete dismantling by radical egalitarians. And for that we are rebuked, chastised, and shunned. In our place, libertarians, leftists, right-liberals, and you name it, have determined that a new order must emerge, an order that worships the individual and his desires above everything.

And we’re supposed to mind our own business? Really? You social progressives are the interlopers, not us. And what I’ll never understand is how anyone can make a rational argument for homosexual unions when to do so flies in the face of Darwin’s survival of the fittest. Such unions cannot even make it to the next generation.

Based on what you said about libertarians, you totally misunderstand what we are about. We not only don’t want to dismantle the Constitution, we are its most avid supporters. Our founding fathers were libertarians. Read the Constitution, it is an amazing document. It does not allow Roe vs Wade, it does not allow federal drug laws, it does not directly recognize marriage of any kind, it does allow you to practice your religion in any decent way you see fit. Read it!!! It is not that long and its words are not that difficult to understand.

Its those very social conservative principles being foisted on those who don’t agree that allow the left to justify every radical, social engineering-policy their tiny minds can cook up. Every time a Republican says that the government has no right to intrude on our lives, the Democrats can yell, “hypocrisy”!

With the left controlling so many of the most powerful institutions in America–including the media–conservatives simply cannot be inconsistent in any way and expect it not to meaningfully effect our viability as a party.

Social conservatives only started complaining when leftists started legislating deviancy some 40 years ago. They have been demonized ever since and it doesn’t seem to matter that they were correct in every sense of the word and society has deteriated almost to the point of anarchy in return.

Dear Mr. Simon, Do you think marriage, real marriage, is important to society? You are a very smart man and I am sure that you are courageous enough to face reality. The communities in the U.S. where marriage barely exists, where 70-80% of children are born and raised never knowing their fathers, are the most dysfunctional and dangerous communities in the country. These communities are rife with all kinds of pathologies and are a perpetual burden on this country. Knowing this, you still want to redefine marriage?

And I am sure you know that it won’t stop at of “gay marriage” either. Because, what’s a family anyway?

Mr. Simon, normalizing perversion is not good for society – any perversion. Of course, stating such won’t make you very popular at cocktail parties. So, you have to pick your God Mr. Simon. Is it man? Libertarianism? The cocktail party circuit? Or is it Yahweh?

Fine – then we lose. Becoming like them isn’t going to win for us, so we might as well be ourselves and really see how the country stands. If it is the amoral, evil rathole that we think it is, then fine! We’ll have to agree to disagree and find us a small state we can all agree to and move – en masse – so we can at least live in this life the way we see fit.

Doesn’t sound as if she’s the one offering an “all or nothing” choice. On the other hand, Simon’s master plan for turning social conservatives into politically 100% silent partners is as frank an offer of “nothing” as one is ever likely to see.

I’m curious what you libertarians or social libs feel the GOP ought to represent once you jettison social conservatism. Maybe you can shout “me too” with the Muslims and homosexuals at the Dem convention when they vote to ban God and dump support for Israel.

One libertarian’s perspective on marriage is that it should be an agreement between reasoning people. What is our age of reasoning? Science will not help us there. Perhaps it should be related to the age where we issue death sentences for egregious crimes conducted by reasoning people (sex undefined). Overall, about 17 years old: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_juvenile_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that, if you can execute someone, you can let them marry? By this latter standard, it seems safe to be able to marry a 17 year old human (sex undefined). Marriage should be a private and not a government process and the 16th Amendment (with its marriage deduction) should be abolished. And…should all this be related to the age you can drink and join the military? Hmm…

Ceteris Paribus, certainly the issue of state sanctioned marriage raises profound questions on the individual’s relationship with the state, as you imply. But my own view is a simply one: if we allow same-sex marriage using justifications currently offered, it will be merely a matter of one or two generations before we have polygamy. Polygamy is a far more powerful human urge than is gay marriage. Other cultures currently practice it and have done so for millennia. Some say we have it already as a result of serial divorce. Whatever the case, arguments in favor of gay marriage, or say the state should get out of the marriage business, need to be ready for a society in which the rich have many wives, and many poor have none.

CP – Yes, we’ve come to have an unreasonable amount of diversity in ages of responsibility for various rights and responsibilities. I may be wrong, but it seems to me there used to be an idea of a relatively standard “age of emancipation”, after which (absent mental incapacitation) you were no longer under parental authority AND at which time you gained all the rights and responsibilities of being an adult.
Having experimented with “changes” in this idea, it might be time to acknowledge the failure of those changes to make anything better, and return to a simpler rule.

The recent election demonstrated the ability of the Democrat machine to manufacture issues and get people worked up about them and to ignore genuine issues like the worst economy since Democrats ran things during the Great Depression.

If these social issues were not there, Democrats would invent new ones and use their enormous power in Hollywood and the media to whip up a frenzy about the new talking points.

Face the fact. Everybody in the media and entertainment industry hates us and they work like stakhanovites to elect Democrats. Is there any thing we can do about it? We can’t change their minds but we can make use of the Class warfare that they have been ginning up for the last few years. Any time you see celebrity “journalism” it usually points out how much Hollywood stars make. It ought to be possible to point out that they don’t pay nearly enough taxes on their income. But that does not get to the heart of the problem. I have a few recommendations.

Number one should be Repealing the Eisenhower Tax Cuts as the Instapundit frequently calls for.

We should also “rationalize intellectual property law”. Patent law provides 20 years protection for inventions of new devices of medicines. That is long enough to encourage people to invent new things and for pharmaceutical companies to invent new drugs. Why should copyright law last more than 20 years? Is it more important for people to create movies than it is to create new disease cures?

Television stations make millions of dollars using the public airwaves. Why shouldn’t the public reap some of the benefits? Auction off the TV spectrum every year. Let the people collect rent on the broadcast spectrum instead of TV station owners collecting that economic rent. It is only economic justice.

As I have said – I don’t mind if the people of the state vote to shape their own state. It is when it is legislated against the will of the people that I take issue with.

@bobcat – not true. Their whole lifestyle is one of defiance to the “heteronormative” culture. Plus, if it was just about legality under the law, then civil unions would have been sufficient. Or, moving to a state that has legal gay marriage.

As for ken – go ahead and insult me all you want. I don’t know you so your opinion means less than nothing to me.

However, none of you can dispute the fact that in recent years people have been sued and lost their businesses to a very small percentage of the population that went out of their way to bankrupt them.

Gays in states that allow gay marriage could have gone to any number of bakeries, wedding planners or photographers – but they didn’t. They specifically went to a small business whose owner they KNEW had issues of conscience that would prohibit them serving gay customers.

In every case they were referred to people who could provide the service. But that wasn’t good enough and they were sued out of business.

THAT is the world you wish us to live in – the world you say defies logic – and THAT is the world the gays wish to usher in. One that can punish and finacially ruin someone or an institution that doesn’t celebrate their lifestyle choice.

If that were the case, why would gay couples be at all interested by engaging the institution of marriage? Your statement defies logic. What the gay community wants is legitimacy, along with all other aspects, legal & spiritual, that are associated with marriage.

bobbcat – Don’t bother trying to apply logic. People like lolly pick and choose which parts of the Bible they will follow and which parts are not important. So shellfish, venison, and woman in pants don’t bother them, but homosexuality is an unbelievable scourge. Even though God made certain men and woman homosexuals. This is one of the things Republicans can’t seem to get over and one of the reasons the party delivers the weak candidates we normally get. Fiscal constraint and smaller government gets drowned out by the overturn Roe v. Wade and stop gay marriage drumbeat.

@lolly who states above: “Their whole lifestyle is one of defiance to the “heteronormative” culture.”

On what have you based this conclusion? Have you considered the strong probability that being attracted to & wanting to forge a permanent relationship with someone else of the same sex is just as natural for them as it is for those of us who are heterosexual?

“Plus, if it was just about legality under the law, then civil unions would have been sufficient. Or, moving to a state that has legal gay marriage.”

This argument is akin to that which was used to support “separate but equal” during the historic civil rights era. Instead of looking upon gay marriage as an issue by which gays want to tear down the institution of marriage, why not consider the notion that the gay community wants to join forces that serve to strengthen the fundamental element of any given civilized society: A stable nuclear family unit.

Again, @ Bobcat – This argument is akin to that which was used to support “separate but equal” during the historic civil rights era.

Yeah? So? This actually happen to be separate but equal in every sense of the word. Simply stated they can’t have children (and let’s not bring up old people and barren people) which puts them in a separate catagory already.

You cannot – and black people WILL NOT allow you to equate this to their civil rights efforts.

Besides, why shouldn’t separate but equal apply? Why should a teeny, tiny minority get to overturn the will of the vast majority of the state? Their “civil rights” arent’ being trampled on here. They are receiving equality under the law and that should be enough for them.

I thought conservatives already wanted to keep these issues away from government intrusion. Unless I’m missing something here, the problem is that liberals want governement validation, funding and in some cases outright overt support for a particular issue (e.g., teaching about gay parents in elemnetary school curricula). If not through passing laws (if they are not afraid of public backlash) then they pervert the Constitution and try to legislate through the Bench.

So we end up engaging in the governement arena as a defensive measure trying to acheive the ends you suggest. Are you proposing we not fight fire with fire by proposing counter legislation and/or fighting legal battles in court ?

So, as I understand it, social conservatives (aka, the few remaining people who actual believe in a moral behavior with actual right and wrong) are supposed to “mind their own beeswax” as the Federal Government, with the force of guns and jail, demands that the annoying social conservative give their money so their neighbor can have her child killed, with the money formerly controlled by the social conservative. Just be quiet and let us smarter neocons deal with the important stuff. You social conservatives just need to shut up, keep working at actual jobs so you get a paycheck which the Federal Government can reduce before you see it to pay for abortions, sex changes, teaching 5 years olds how to have proper sex with animals, etc. Nobody else has to mind their own beeswax as they invent ingenious ways to use your money to become less human and more animal. How about this. I, Social Conservative, am now Bartleby The Scrivener. “I prefer not to.” So, I will not work any longer. You have no more of my money to steal to pay to kill babies and to promote marriage by people who are unable to extend the human race. I will not demand your money. But you will no longer get mine. God, who seems forgotten in all this, somehow will help see me through. But God does not smile on those who kill the most vulnerable.

I’m of a libertarian slant and have no problem with states – the people – voting whatever social norms suit them. The problem I have is when they are legislated against the very will of those same people. This was done in California.

What I object to mostly about abortion is that people opposed to it are required to pay for it. If lefties want abortion, they should send their money to pay for it. Period. And since we have seemed to have lost the “battle”, I think we should take another approach to the issue. Let’s move on to making abortion safe. Let’s make them have hospital standards to perform them. Let’s make lots and lots of rules and regulations for them to jump through. Hah! beat them at their own game, bury them. You know, we’ll the champion of women by keeping them safe.

As for gay “marriage”. If they want hospital visitation rights or leave their property to their partner, they can fill out legal paperwork. And if they want medical insurance for their “partner” they can either pay for it themselves or lobby their employer. So what do they really want with it? I suspect is to smash the Judeo-Christian sacrament of one man, one woman relationship ordained by God. And once they have this “right”, they will demand that the conservative churches perform these marriages or lose their tax exempt status. And then on to polygamy which is ordained by Allah. Just think of all those Muslims with four wives all living on welfare which they consider a Dhimmi payment due by non-Muslims. Conside the geometic progression of new Muslims with four wives all paid for by you.

What I object to mostly about abortion is that people opposed to it are required to pay for it.

I am compelled by law to have car insurance. I don’t like the fact that I have to pay extra for your idiocy because you texted and wrecked. I am now compelled by law to have health insurance. I dont’ like paying double what I should because you’re a fat slob who can’t say no to a 12 pack of Pepsi every day and gave yourself diabetes. And as a taxpayer I don’t like paying for your disability for life because you didn’t take care of yourself and went into a diabetic coma and rolled down the stairs and broke your back.

If I don’t want to pay for auto insurance, I can choose not to purchase a car. And that is the sensible choice for a lot of urban folks. So, @randomengineer, how does your argument extend in terms of choices which avoid the ACA expense, either directly or by penalty?

Yes and I flunked. I missed the obvious, “You don’t need to participate in car insurance if you don’t own a car,” bit, and wwnt straight for the, “of course you’re correct! You shouldn’t have to pay for the folly of others!”

However, if I’m fat, dump stupid and lazy – yet I pay my own way, how would I be costing anyone else a dime?

Roger, if Roe v Wade were somehow overturned, no woman would have to travel to Tuscany or Quebec (unless for whatever reason that’s what she wanted to do). If she should have to travel at all, she would only have to go as far as the nearest state where abortion was legal.

Based on my non-legal reading of Roe V Wade, I could never figure our why gay marriage is illegal on a national level. While Roe is a deeply flawed decision (even pro-choice legal minds have had that opinion), it actually makes some sense if you substitute “gay marriage” for “abortion” in the reading.

Actually I don’t personally care about gay marriage …. with a couple of exceptions. I don’t have any faith that religous institutions won’t be litigated to death until their ministers perform gay marriage. When a group is willing to threaten violence against churches with lots of little children in them – as occurred post Prop8 – then I doubt that they will stop until they churches give in completely. The New Mexico photographer is another example. Gay marriage isn’t legal in her state either, but she is being prosecuted as if it was.

Second, based solely on my annecdotal experience, the question of polygamy is perceived “only” as a means of keeping gay marriage from being legalized. Actually, the level of disgust I have witnessed from gays (again only annecdotally) on the topic rivals those responses I have received from straights on gay marriage. If you are free to marry anyone you want, why shouldn’t you be free to marry as many as you want? There are people living in multiple combinations in homes that have no religious ties as well as those who do.

So my disagreements with you are first that I do not believe that, once gay marriage is achieved, religous organizations won’t still be interfered with in their personal matters.

Second, the poor already are getting substandard abortion services. When journalist try to report the story, it is pretty scary. One operator got closed down in one state and simply went across state lines and started up again. Another was assumed to have medical training because the staff knew abortions proceeded even when the doctor didn’t arrive. Turns out they were wrong. And that is just one of several horror stories … Better monitoring – for health reasons – of abortion clinics is needed NOW.

And to the “women’s issues” in this campaign …. How did the old time feminist view that women are adults and can take responsibility for themselves turn into “You have to provide me with contraceptives because I can’t ask the guy I barely know to provide (or even wear) a condom?”

Surely there is a role for government in promoting social mores that, historically at least, have let to cohesive communities.

As Dr. Dalrymple said: “There has been an unholy alliance between those on the left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the left in precisely those areas where it need not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way t hey like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material.”

The problem we have is one of conveyance, of language. Where virtue is on our side, we still lose. This notion is seen today in headlines suggesting Republicans only want to cut taxes on the wealthy, while Democrats want to cut taxes on the middle and lower classes – where it is the D’s who want more of the people’s money and refuse to structurally solve our issues. I heard a reporter on NPR yesterday ask of Senator Corker, “but what of the exit polls during the general election that suggested the majority is open to the idea of taxing the wealthy”…and Corker did not defend himself, his philosophy, nor ridicule such a poll or the idea of adhering or fomenting class jealousy. And who can forget titles such as “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”, penning incredulity at middle America’s placing principle above soaking the rich.

Also socially, the R’s moreso understand the fragility of nature and of civilization and are generally more determined to create a binding society, where the D’s profit from social division. The more someone pays attention to politics, the more receptive they are to our ideas; like Steyn said, we have to somehow convey to the Last Man that our ideas are best. Perhaps that is unlikely.

The rich voted for Obama and contributed to him. The current Democrat political coalition is the rich and poor in the Democratic Party aligned against the middle class in the Republican Party.

The Democrats want a show down where Republicans give in and raise taxes on “The Rich”. Republicans need a shopping list of taxes on the rich that they will agree to. Remove the tax exemption on municipal bonds. Why shouldn’t coupon clippers pay taxes on all their income just like a working stiff? Inheritance taxes? Hell to the yes! Let the trust fund radicals at ACORN pay a special trust fund surtax. Remove the federal tax exemption for state income tax. Then we can craft a special millionaires tax designed specifically to nail movie stars. The Democrats can either agree or they can explain why they don’t.

Make part of the deal that no Republican will vote for or against the tax increases that the Democrats are in love with but that if a deal is worked out all Republicans will vote “Present”.

Edward, consanguinity wouldn’t be an issue for same-sex siblings. On what basis would you deny two sisters or two brothers wishing to wed? Before anybody says “ewww”, think about it for a moment. There are perfectly rational reasons why a pair of older sisters or brothers might wish to marry that have nothing to do with wishing to have conjugal relations. In my personal case, I have a severely disabled son who is likely to live with me for the rest of his or my life. There would be several tangible benefits if we could call our relationship a marriage. Why shouldn’t we be able to get married.

The Gay Marriage issue is not about rights. It has never been about rights. It is about compulsory endorsement.

I do not care what you do, what relationships you enter into or what you call them. None of my business. I just don’t care. HOWEVER a same sex relationship is not a marriage. It is not a moral or religious issue. It simply is not what the word has historically meant. It is much like demanding that the government give me the ability to “fly” by changing the meaning of the word “fly” to include slowly walking on the ground. Now I can fly – not because I have any new abilities – but because you have lobbied the government to play fast and loose with the language.

Homosexual pairings are not so directly analogous to traditional marriages that they should be defined with the same term. It isn’t good, bad right wrong or indifferent. It is simply an attempt to be intentionally imprecise with the language.

Now – even given that, I do not care that gays consider themselves married. To the degree that gay couples have less “rights” than married couples – I am on their side. But the gay marriage issue is not about rights. It has never been about rights. It is not about what gays are “allowed” to do. It is about compulsory endorsement. It is about what non-gays are allowed to say or believe. It is Orwellian. I will tell you something we both know not to be true. I will then beat you until YOU make ME believe it.

spot on – I have tried the same argument for years and it’s turned around on me by those saying “so you are hung up on the word ‘marriage’?” You have more cleary articulated exactly how I feel. Civil unions can be made as “legally equal” to marriage in all respects if we want (and probably should) – but don’t call it marriage, because that’s just another form of compulsory leftist indoctrination.

GDT: Just so. SSM is going to be extremely damaging to women, who, strangely enough, are some of its biggest supporters. Any traditional and legal privileges that women have as “wife” or “mother” will have to fall by the wayside. After all, a man can now be a “wife.” Please … it’s absurdity. It also has nothing to do with civil rights, and it’s practically blasphemy to say so.

And finally, it’s another attempt, in the name of equality, to create a more generic, less human world. Parent A and Parent B are the new terms, instead of warm and loving terms like bride and groom. When the human is seen as bigoted, we’ve got a problem.

Roger, I am sympathetic with your approach up to a point, but there are a couple of problems with it. I have been opposed to gay marriage because I see no way to justify opposition to polygamy if gay marriage is allowed. The Republican Party came into being in opposition to slavery and polygamy, calling both “barbarism.” That’s still true, although today’s polygamist threat comes from the followers of a different prophet from the one in question in the mid-nineteenth century. Polygamist societies are not healthy or stable in general, as are societies in which no marriage at all is the norm.

The other problem with giving in on the social issues is the liberals. They don’t want freedom; they want compulsion. Legalizing gay marriage comes with the branding of opponents as “bigots,” forcing private adoption agencies to place children with gay couples or go out of business, removing questions of morals in divorce and custody cases (and there are some situations which reasonable people can see are not good for small children), and, as we have seen, forcing religious people to pay for things they think are morally wrong. If only liberals were actually liberal, we wouldn’t have these problems, but we do.

Is littering a social or religious issue? Can people be forced to clean up after themselves in public? Most litter is no health hazard, after all. And we hear it said that “Cleanliness is next to godliness”, thus at some level, keeping a litter-free public space is a matter of religious dictate. We even see that in places where social conservatives and religious fanatics gather in mass places assemblies — the places are cleaner after the mass gathering of knuckle-dragging socio-cons and fireandbrimstonepreaching zealots than before. Clearly not littering, cleaning up after themselves is some sort of weird and strange, out-there, fear-based religious practice.

The religious nature of it is made even more clear when we compare the gatherings of these masses of fanatical religious zealots to normal people, say at a Bon Jovi or Kanye West concert, a Million-Mom March, or an Obama rally at some prestigious establishment of higher learnhood. What do we find as the regular volk of these secular public assemblies disburse? Why they gift the space with a plentitude of leavings! Enough to fill fleets of garbage trucks, and broken benches, vandalized infrastructure of all sorts, even, perhaps as some studious remembrance of the ancient offerings to the god Baal-Peor, human excrement.

Anti-littering laws are awful attempts to cram the backwards morals of religious zealots down the throats of Americans. They are against the First Amendment, they establish a religion.

– – — –

The truth is that ALL LAWS are religious in nature. It is a false thing, a false primal indulgence, to make a distinction between laws that are G-dly, that is based on religious dicta, and laws that are not. The question is what minimum standard of common religious laws can Americans of our time accept?

It is unwise, short-sightet historically, ignorant of humanity’s glory, to climb upon a broom and fly above our Emerald City to proclaim that all we Dorothies must surrender now! Take that broom, instead, and join the clean-up crew, and teach our children to clean up after themselves.

I believe civil unions would be a perfect compromise and pass nationwide in a flash. Many people who would not support gay marriage would support civil unions. It would be respectful to traditionalists and afford the legal benefits to same sex couples. Everyone wins. Let’s move on. I would point to Britain’s civil union law as an example.

But even very carefully worded civil union laws have been struck down by courts, most famously in California which started this ball rolling, and civil unions seem to have been taken completely off the table by legal fiat. It seems the position has become marriage or nothing – and that has been dictated by a mere handful of people in a nation of 300 million.

It has set up the situation where one side will win and one side will lose. This is not a wise position to put people in, especially since it could have been avoided.

The result has been, because of some pretty legal argument, same sex couples still do not have the protections they could have already had under civil union laws and both sides have dug in their heels and it looks like we’re in for a long fight.

Once again Roger you are using the “Republicans lost the woman vote” theme. White women voted 56% to 42% in favor of Romney. The overall 18-29 whites voted 55% to 44% for Romney. This young and women slogan was used to depress the whites in that category from voting or push them into the everyone is doing it category so they voted for Obama. Do your research.

So Roger, you’re “pro-life” and pro same sex “marriage.” Well I’m for abortion unless there’s a responsible father involved (which unfortunately is too often not the case) who opposes the idea. But I don’t believe in the concept of homosexual marriage. I consider myself a conservative. Is that a “winning” strategy?

This piece is a trumpet of your “Roger opinon politics” and nothing more.

A lot could be said here, but just a little history. First, per Jesus and Caesar, it should be noted that all four gospels repeat Jesus’s admonition against divorce. It’s a huge part of the Christian message. Homosexuality and abortion do not appear in the gospels. (Homosexuality does pop up in a couple of other places.)

But … and this is important but … if you read any standard book on early Christianity, you will see that criticism over pagan sexual practices was a huge deal for the theologians. Really, it’s the main criticism they brought to bear against their Roman ovelords. Here they were explicit: divorce, infanticide, abortion, homosexuality, prostitution and sex with children. (Polygamy wasn’t in play in that part of the world at that time, so it doesn’t get a mention.)

Basically, Christians saw unconstrained sexuality as the root of the problems in the pagan world. It should also be noted that it was this opposition to unconstrained sexuality that really allowed Christianity to triumph, since this message was very appealing to women. The most important converts to Christianity were high born women (who had the most to lose) who later brought their husbands around.

As it happens, the debate over homosexuality is not just about homosexuality or gay marriage. An honest debate also has to take into account polygamy, which is clearly in the on-deck circle. (Marriage equality that is not.) And perhaps the legalization of sex with children.

Regarding the latter, see this link that was cited in an article on the Fox News website yesterday.

Basically the author is teeing up the idea of legalizing sex with children by arguing that pedophilia is a form of sexual orientation. You are born that way, in effect, per Lady Gaga.

Obviously, the legalization of sex with children is tricky. The Left was all over themselves attacking Sandusky, presumably to create some distance between him and gay marriage. But arguably, they just do incrementalism better than conservatives. When Denmark originally legalized child pornography, the basic party line was that this was not a government matter. Which seems oddly similar to Mr. Simon’s argument on marriage. (A letter to the editor in the WSJ yesterday made a similar point from a law professor at Cardozo.)

So really this is a package deal at least in the West. Do you want to live in a pagan world? Or a Judeo-Christian one?

Also, I would note more broadly that sex is hardly just a bedroom issue. The countries that are soon going to go bankrupt, Greece, Japan, Italy, Spain, etc. all have horrible demographics.

Finally, readers may want to consult David Goldman’s book on these matters. As I remember, he had some choice comments about Sparta.

So explain to me again how the republican party will do better by abandoning social conservationism and telling them to basically sit down and shut up?

And why are conservatives arguing with liberals how much control the government should have over the traditionally religious function of marriage? Why aren’t we asking why does government have any control over marriage at all? What’s next, an official government license to get baptized? A “born again” certificate? Or maybe even government registration in order to change religions? The question shouldn’t be “where should the government draw the line on who can and can’t be married,” it should be “why does the government get to draw that line.”

Exactly. For too many years now, gov’t has been allowed to broaden its functions to a scope (along with the necessary expense that goes with it) that goes waaaaaay beyond what is laid out in the Constitution.

I agree with Roger on this. Every one of the so called “social issues” existed when the Constitution was written, and not a single one of them is mentioned. These are clearly tenth amendment issues, and don’t forget the tenth doesn’t automatically give the states free reign but also the alternative that its only the business of “the people”.

In a quick review of the comments I see some real doozies, like illegal immigration as a “social issue”, it isn’t, it’s a defense issue.

How many of you support Jim Crow laws? That is, laws which give one portion of our society unfair and unjust advantages over another? That is to say, one group of Americans are given special treatment under the law while another group is forced to endure disadvantages under the same set of laws?

That’s what government regulation and licensing of marriage is: A Jim Crow law.

In times past, the church and the state recognised the difference between secular civil contracts and the church sacrament of marriage. iow, every marriage in a church was accompanied by a separate civil, and secular, contractual agreement between the parties to be married. This was true even before there was any hint of the doctrine of the separation between church and state. This is a part of Western religious history, folks. There’s legal and historical precedent, here. Iow, it’s a part of our culture…that we have abandoned. It’s a part of your religion -and doctrines and teachings- that you have abandoned.

This is issue is not about the defense of the church’s sacrament of marriage. It’s about freedom and liberty – and equality – under the secular law. SoCons have been on the wrong side of this issue.

You cannot claim to be the party of freedom and liberty while thus limiting the freedom and liberty of even a single American citizen.

So you see it as a civil rights issue and therefore the government should place no restrictions on marriage lest they infringe on someone’s rights? So we should remove all those restrictions such as sex, number, and age from marriage so that we don’t push our moral values on others and basically let anyone marry anyone else with no restrictions whatsoever?

wrt civil contracts, certainly. wrt the religious sacrament of marriage, that’s a different matter. A marriage in a church, under particular doctrines and teachings, is entirely up to that church. A civil contractual agreement between two citizens is an entirely different matter.

What you’ve confused is the difference between the two. SoCons use secular government to impose Jim Crow laws upon American citizens. …and use those same laws to grant rights and privileges to a specially selected group of Americans. Were such Jim Corw laws imposed upon any other group of Americans, limiting their rights and fredoms, you’d be raising – ahem – holy hell about it.

It’s a civil liberty issue. It’s not a religious issue. That’s where you get confused.

Bottom line is, your (SoCon’s) argument says that American citizens have no freedom of association and have no right to enter into civil contracts w/o religious (SoCon) approval. The logical extension says that no private business has the right to enter into contracts w/o religious (SoCon) approval. The other thing in your argument is that the right to privacy has been suspended in America. i.e. All private civil contracts must first meet with religious (SoCon) approval.

iow, you cannot logically make the argument from a religious perspective w/o embracing a state religion (government operated and run by a religion), nor can you logically make your argument from a civil liberties perspective. But, this is what you actually do…while wondering why so many Americans have trouble understanding your argument. The problem you really face is, they understand it all too well.

You have no ideas what my views are at all. I believe the government has no business in marriage at all. I don’t think anyone should have to get permission from the government to be married regardless of their sexual orientation or anything else. And I don’t think any government benefits should be tied to marriage either. I think that any benefits granted by the government should be based on a household, not on who is having sex with who.

But that doesn’t change the fact that no matter where the line is drawn in the current system that it will be a line based on someone’s moral beliefs and those beliefs will be held by the government to be superior to other beliefs. The only way to take morals out of the marriage debate is to take marriage off the government’s hands.

@ Warren Bonesteel, If opposing same sex marriage is the equivalent of supporting Jim Crow laws of separate but equal. Would there not be special drinking fountains, rest rooms and Gays not allowed or not welcome signs?

In fact, there are many businesses, places and events where Gays are encouraged and marketed so as to gather and spread their vast amounts of wealth. I know this because many of my gay friends and associates are quite wealthy.

May I issue a towel for your hand wringing specious argument Bonesteel?

You are sick and a fool. So you think people should be able to “marry” 9 year old girls?

I don’t know what shocks me more. Reading libertarian nonsense on conservative websites or left wing nonsense on liberal websites.

I remember in high school when we read A Farewell to Arms. Maybe I should read that again. But we are entering a similar age. We don’t have the Social Darwinism as an underlying philosophy. We have multiculturalism, which is nonsense but clearly less dangerous.

Of course, we don’t have national default looming as well. And the threat that we stop producing public goods, i.e. public safety.

The successful Western nations have had fiscal crises before. But they were caused by war. Not this time, by demographics and entitlements.

And just to add a thought to the conversation, here is a link to an article from the Harvard Crimson about a new club that has been authorized there that focuses on bondage and sado masochism.

From a religious perspective as a Christian I hate the sin, not the sinner.

From a somewhat antiquated and admittedly traditional personal perspective, some of the physical reality of homosexual sex is just plain disgusting.

From a societal perspective, in the Judeo-Christian countries marriage has been defined as between one man and one woman for many centuries. I fail to see any societal good or improvement from changing that; in fact just the opposite.

From a political perspective, let’s treat the symptoms of the dissatisfaction instead of cutting off a critical arm of civilization. Amend all federal laws including the tax code to remove all real and perceived (the by far most prevalent situation being perceived) advantages to being married. Tax all income at one rate, and tax the individual. Allow homosexuals to sign a permission note that authorizes the partner of their choice to have all the rights in medical care situations afforded to married people. Allow each state to set its own law by vote of the people regarding homosexual marriage. I’m fine with changing all federal law that treats homosexuals differently from married people.

But when it comes to forcing the final destruction of tradtional marriage on the entire country via federal fiat, I will never back down so long as I draw breath. In short, stuff that notion where the sun don’t shine.

So…the needs of the many are greater than the needs of the few. You, and many others offer a collectivist argument that opposes individualism and embraces big government interference in our private lives. There’s nothing conservative about that position or that arrument. It’s a Marxist/communist argument. A socialist argument, at best.

Your argument, and that of many others, is also in direct opposition to the Western Religious doctrine of free will, taught in your own sacred texts.

iow, you know better than your God or Saviour what is best for the rest of us.

Obviously you failed to note I support removal on a federal level of ALL inequities between married and homosexual persons. Yet you still throw up straw men and liberal cant.

Proof positive the debate is not about rights but about the final destruction of the traditional family unit in American society.

I truly don’t care who does what to whom or puts what where in the privacy of their bedroom. On the other hand the activist gay community wants to put their preferences and mores on display for all to see, and wish to legitimize any and all behaviour. Furthermore the activists want to make a radical change in the very heart, definition, and soul of marriage.

I’m astonished that an otherwise rational, intelligent person (but Bonesteel, really?) can make the argument of so-cons “embracing big government interference in our private lives.” It’s the libs who are doing that by insisting on CHANGING society. Pro-SSM folks are the ones using government and judicial interference in our private lives. Come on, surely you’re bright enough to see that.
The doctrine of free will? Surely you aren’t making the argument that so-cons are keeping you from sinning in any way shape or form. Have at it. But you shouldn’t get to put the seal of approval (which is what marriage is) on your perversions, yes, perversions. That’s what they are–by definition.

I’m arguing that SoCons have embraced and supported Jim Crow laws, limiting the rights and freedoms of one group of Americans while granting special consideration under the law to another group of Americans.

You’ve conflated the difference between secular issues and religious issues and have enacted and endorsed secular laws based upon religious doctrines and teachings.

When you do so, you’ve denied the religious doctrine of free will and the secular doctrine of freedom of association.

I would agree that social conservatives have, at least at their organizationa levels, taken their eye off the ball in the last twenty years or so. We can agree on the principle that government should not get involved in personal affairs. However, the government *is* involved in a gigantic way: welfare and entitlements, and the serious social distortions that they bring, ranging from Baby Boomers who didn’t bother saving for their retirements, to young single women who view govenrment as a surrogate husband. This is what ought to be the #1 issue for social conservatives: get government out of the business of rearranging society with its offerings of perverse incentives.

Unfortunately, as the last election has shown, the entitlement classes now have a majority. And as a commenter on another thread here said yesterday, children will always vote for Santa Claus. Here’s how social conservatism can help: exercise and press for moral leadership. In other words, be the adult in the room. Get enough of the entitlement children to grow up such that the entitlement classes no longer have a majority. It’s a tough assignment — once adults falls into entitlement and dependency thinking, few of them ever recover. But we must somehow recover enough of them so that the adults are once again in the majority and the children can’t vote themselves free candy. Otherwise, it’s Lord of the Flies time. We’re almost there now.

The problem is that sexual outside of the traditional bourgeoisie model tends to cost us all a bundle. The gender gap consists entirely of single and divorced women because many of them prefer to have a big government safety net. Children raised without fathers are more likely to have problems in school, more likely to commit crimes, are more likely to be less productive as adults and often create more single mother homes when they mature.

Then there is the problem of the growing number of childless adults free riding on a social welfare state based on the assumption of a stable or growing population. Obviously this includes most gays. When there were four to six workers for every retiree.Social Security was a net plus for everyone over the traditional idea that you marry and have children to secure your own care in sickness and old age In 2010 we were down to 2.8 and falling fast with the bulk of boomer retirements still pending and a plummeting birthrate. What happens when it gets below 2 and the workers decide they’d be better off just taking care of their own parents and screw all the free riders?

As for abortion, the addition of as many as 30 million people age 18 to 39 would nicely increase that ration of workers to retirees. Too bad they were aborted because at the time most of them were inconvenient to their parents’ plans.

Or worse. They have already shown that they can force photographers to photograph gay weddings, even in a state where gay marriage isn’t legal. So what’s to stop them from forcing churches who rent their facilities out for weddings to either allow gay weddings or stop renting out their facilities? Absolutely nothing.

In Canada, a pastor was fined a couple of thousand dollars for preaching from the pulpit from Leviticus 18 on the Bible prohibition against homosexual sodomy.It sure can happen here. Obama is going to come after the church.

This has already happened in “progressive” Canada: in 2005, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal demanded that the Roman Catholic men’s fraternity, the Knights of Columbus, award a lesbian couple damages for refusing to rent them a hall for their same-sex “wedding” reception.

When the KofC realized that the “happy couple” were both female, they politely explained their dilemma, as observant Roman Catholics. The KofC cancelled the rental contract that had been signed, returned the couple’s deposit and paid for the rental of a new hall and the reprinting of wedding invitations. Not enough: the lesbians turned to a government agency, our Orwellian Human Rights (sic) Commissions—run entirely by radical progressives—to adjudicate the problem and punish the non-conformists.

One of the lesbians said that she and her partner didn’t realize the hall was run by a religious group. They said they found it by driving around and following a sign for a bingo hall. “We certainly didn’t go looking for this problem,” she said. “We would never have booked the hall if we had known who the Knights of Columbus are, because we wouldn’t want any hassle on our special day.” RIGHT.

BTW, the Tribunal awarded the complainants a small sum for expenses incurred in renting an alternative hall and $1,000 each for injury to their dignity, feelings and self respect. That’s TAXPAYERS’ money (as was the huge expense of adjudicating this case)!

Roger, the other side is always running to “Big Daddy” government to kiss and make them better—and exact revenge on their “mean” opponents. What do you say to that?

It is often difficult to talk about sensitive issues with friends. It’s easier to avoid them so as not to risk losing the relationship than to explore them to find a path forward.

Yes, I do consider a number of people here friends or “cyberfriends” without having met in person. I spend more time here chatting than I do with many of my friends in the “physical” world and people here know more about what I think, feel and believe than almost all the people in my “real” world. I care about my “PJM family” in a way that might seem to defy logic. Having not met in person, why would I care? Well, when I share something so intimate as my deepest thoughts and feelings, when I participate nearly daily in often deep and moving sentiments and we share our love of country and a bond in trying to salvage her from common threats and for common good…we share a virtual foxhole…I’m going to care about you. Especially the authors here, to whom I believe we all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude. (although I once mentioned that “I care” about a married female author here in passing to another commenter…and it provoked a response, so I have to be more careful about explaining myself!)

My PJM family is deeply important to me. Or else I would not spend so many of my free moments here. Or try so hard (often in vain, I believe) to add to the conversation or to enhance the experience.

Having said all that, I am deeply dismayed by the chasm intentionally deepened by committed leftists that continues to divide us and destroys our ability to stem the tide of creeping sedition and advancing treason.

Any time a leftist can find a way to get a non-leftist to react to a social issue in a way that they can paint the picture vividly themselves…they will set that leg snare and it will snap shut like a bear trap. Over and over and over again…I watch in sadness and frustration as yet another trap deflects us from moving forward and gaining momentum.

I’m a “live and let live” type on most social issues. I am not a “libertarian” by self-description. Despite my moniker (which I now slightly regret), I’m not a squishy “centrist”. I’m an “issue-ist”…I form strong opinions, just not on dogma or party doctrine…rather, upon my individual analysis of them.

Abortion, same sex marriage, contraception, are NOT the same issues to my way of thinking. However, the manner in which the REACTION to those issues is intentionally provoked…then painted…by leftists and their tools of indoctrination in academia, Hollywood and mass media leave us bloodied and limping every time.

It’s a rigged game. And, we keep falling into the same trap every time.

Plunging a scissors into the head of a baby as it leaves the womb is pure evil. The cavalier devaluation of the sanctity and gift of life is a sign of moral decay. And, let’s not be coy or disingenuous…the VAST number of abortions are performed as a lifestyle choice…a matter of “ridding an inconvenience” avoiding personal responsibility.

Where each person draws their personal line that they feel uncomfortable crossing varies. So, where do leftists make non-leftists wrestle? Rape and incest. HUH? The statistical significance of THAT being the place of debate is inane.

Or whether God should “punish” bad behavior. My belief is that the greatest gift we have been given as humans (and as Americans) is free will. However, free will means that we have to be given wide latitude to choose wrongly. (not commit crimes, but be allowed to err…or even sin).

As a man, it is not my place to try to replace God’s wisdom or judgment. Nor to impede HIS wishes that mankind can choose widely and broadly.

As an American, I would like to live in a land that models itself after the free will model. Our self-governing over man’s behavior should be limited enough to allow for bad lifestyle choices. Our gathering places for pure moral teaching ought not to be the State House, but a house of worship.

This definition of government’s role…limits it to a smaller, narrower role. It’s role is to protect and preserve…not to invade and interfere. The government should not be peeping in our bedrooms, nor invading our bank vaults where we are legally engaging in our affairs of heart or hearth.

I am completely against picking on people for reasons of their genetic makeup. It offends me and I react extremely negatively to bullying. Nobody can “own” a word in the public domain. If someone can “own” the word “marriage”…then I want to buy all the vowels from Vanna and begin to accumulate all the words for myself.

We need to do a MUCH better job of articulating the important issues and avoiding the leg snares. Especially in a rigged game. And, even more especially…when treason is breathing down our necks threatening our very existence.

Sorry for the long post…but, it’s because I do care about my PJM family and my cyberfriends here. And…my country and countrymen.

Why do all the wrong people seem to get into the places where they can do the most damage… seems to me that the system needs to evolve in a way that ensures these people are only given a voice when it is the voice of those they are suppose to be representing and not there own naive views!

1) The gay-rights movement was Communist-founded; it was a socially-subversive effort from the get-go. That’s the old post-WWII “homophile rights movement” of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis.

2) The “modern gay-rights movement”—i.e., the radical movement which supplanted the more staid “homophile rights” organizations following the Stonewall riot—was founded by New Left SDSers and Maoists. Their openly-stated goal was to destroy heterosexual marriage.

3) Nobody has ever publicly called the current gay-rights movement on this foundational principle, nor asked why “marriage” went from must-destroy to must-have.

4) The objective of those early post-Stonewall radical organizations was to destroy what is now called “heteronormativity,” though they did not yet use that term. The term, however, is the common currency of “Queer Studies” and “Gender Studies” courses in most colleges and universities. In short, while the gay-rights movement is demanding “marriage” in the public political arena, it is busily working on campuses to destroy the concept of “heteronormativity.” The public demand for “marriage” is masking the hide-in-plain-sight social subversion which was the original goal of the radical groups.

5) The gay-rights movement is aimed at completely gutting/destroying First Amendment protections of free speech, free association, and religious freedom. It is the gay-rights movement that has consistently pushed the concept of “hate speech,” which is aimed at making political disagreement—i.e., open discussion of issues—impossible by dismissing contravening views as “hate,” which makes it unnecessary to engage and respond to disagreement. Because traditional religion teaches disapproval of homosexual behavior, it is considered “hate speech”; once “marriage” is extended to same-sex couples, notwithstanding the First Amendment we will see lawsuits against traditional religious entities for engaging in “hate speech” (as has already happened in Europe), and on “equal protection” grounds if a traditional religious entity declines to perform a same-sex marriage. We have already seen, in this country, lawsuits by gay-rights activists against private businesses on equal protection grounds for refusing to provide floral arrangements, catering facilities, or bed-and-breakfast accommodations to same-sex wedding parties.

6) The gay-rights movement is about power, social control, and societal approval—not about obtaining legal protections as its spokespeople allege. California already had a comprehensive domestic-partnership law which provided the “marriage protections” which are the movement’s alleged objective—but the movement insisted on pushing for marriage anyway; Prop 8 was the result. Most people of good will, whatever their opinion of homosexual behavior, are prepared to extend domestic partnership protection to same-sex couples; it is, however, right and proper that a movement which has spent forty years in insisting on its members’ distinctiveness from the general society should, if it does receive the recognition/protection it wants, get a distinct form of protection instead of hermit-crabbing its way into “marriage.”

7) The gay-rights lobby makes its case for “marriage equality” on the basis of a completely bogus equation between same-sex unions and the abolition of anti-miscegenation laws during the Civil Rights Movement. Laws prohibiting interracial marriages, however, invalidated otherwise-valid marriages on the basis of the extraneous element of race; same-sex marriage is a completely new legal arrangement. The two are not comparable. The gay-rights movement has been attempting for forty years to hermit-crab its way into the shell of the old Civil Rights Movement.

8) The gay-rights movement is a “human rights” movement, not a civil rights movement. Civil rights, as protected in the Bill of Rights, are rights held against the government; the right to slap the government down if it engages in unreasonable interference in personal liberty. “Human rights” are the seeking of special privileges from the government for a favored group, whether that group is seeking affirmative action and set-asides or same-sex marriage. The gay-rights movement has been using “human rights” in its language since at least 1977, and attempted, with far too much success, to corrupt the political language so as to make the special-interest “gimmes” of human rights seem co-equal with the anti-government protections of civil rights. This corruption of political language can also be seen in the way the gay-rights movement has equated verbal political disagreement with physical violence: “gay-baiting,” a term derived from red-baiting (and an early form of dismissing disagreement as “hate speech”) has, for years, been referred to as “gay-bashing.” Gay-bashing, i.e. physical attack, usually by gangs of youths, on persons perceived as homosexual, is a genuine if intermittent phenomenon—but using the term to denote oral disagreement with political objectives, as the gay-rights movement does, is a fundamental dishonesty. Likewise, the movement’s pursuit of “human-rights” special privileges should not be mistaken for civil rights agitation.

As a social conservative, I have to disagree with one of your main assumptions in this article (and I am sure it has been stated by others in the comment section, but I do not have the time to read all of them). That is, it is the social conservatives that want to impose their views via government action. That we want the government to intrude into people’s bedrooms. That is a caricature. For as long as I have been paying attention to politics (admittedly it has only really been since 2001 – war on terror), it is actually the social liberals that have been a lot more aggressive about government intrusion into our beliefs. Not to mention, a lot more in your face about it. I get blue in the face repeating this to my more libertarian friends.

From abortion to biomedical research to gay marriage to contraception to to the pledge to home-schools regulations to, heck, nativity displays at Christmas, it has largely been the social liberals that started and enlarged those fights to national issues – primarily via the legal and governmental/bureaucratic actions instead of popular votes. We have just been reacting to these. We are not striving for a theocracy, but to have our viewpoints taken more seriously. In essence, we are striving for a more civil society. That is why I think libertarians and economic conservatives should actually be embracing us. Actually a lot of social conservatives that I know are also economic conservatives (I am both as well). I would not be surprised if we share underlying fundamental reason beyond the label ‘conservative’, of why this is the case.

“…take marriage away from the government. It’s a sacrament, after all.”
You could not be more right! And the fight seems to be more than anything else one of semantics: many conservatives who support gay civil unions are opposed to gay marriage – why? Other than the word itself, what is the difference?
Lastly, there is a very slim chance that “Social Conservatives” (read Fundamentalist Christians) will be persuaded by arguments put forth in this article; their objectives really aren’t those put forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – their aim is to prepare the way for the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His dominion over the entire earth (sound familiar?) In their view the US government is a means to that end.

As a Christian I say your post is hogwash. Ushering in a theocracy is NOT our goal. You rely on an old, outdated stereotype of people I doubt you have even personally met. Are there wackos out there claiming to be Christians? Certainly. Just as there are atheist wackos out there that most atheists would not want to be associated with. Be fair and don’t use the exceptions to prove a rule.

Has it occurred to you that government corrupts everything it touches, and having government sanctioned marriage actually give the government the pretext to involve itself in what should be a sacrament?

I would think that religious socons would be the first people to want to get government out of marriage entirely.

many conservatives who support gay civil unions are opposed to gay marriage – why? Other than the word itself, what is the difference?

You should ask that question, not of social conservatives, but of the gay-rights lobby—which, as I observe in #42 above, insisted on pressing for “marriage” in California when it already had achieved comprehensive civil union/domestic partnership protection for same-sex couples.

The reason the gay-rights lobby did that is that it is interested in destroying marriage, per its original movement goals; its push for “marriage equality” is a Cloward-Piven-style assault on “heteronormativity” and upon the First Amendment.

Do all of the people, homosexual and heterosexual, who blandly support “marriage equality” hold this view? Of course not—as with the useful idiots and dupes who joined communist-front organizations in the 1930s and 1940s, they are well-meaning muddleheads who are easily drawn towards what appear to be do-good causes.

My view is marriage is for the kids. Asking who is hurt is not necessarily the right question. If a couple does not have kids, it really does not matter whether they stay together or not. It certainly is not a state issue.

So you have no problems with legalized polygamy either as long as no one is getting hurt? For that matter, why not marriage starting at puberty, inter-species marriage, and incestuous marriages as long as no one is getting hurt?

Just curious as to where you draw the line and how your line is morally superior to those who draw the line somewhere else.

Why two? And based on nature, isn’t one an “adult” when they hit puberty? And why is where you draw the moral line superior to where someone else draws the moral line? And most importantly, why is the government involved in the traditionally religious function of marriage anyway?

Actually, gov’t shouldn’t be involved at all, but this is not the reality. Because of the threat of DOMA, the gay community deems it necessary to “fight the good fight” for their interest in enjoying marriage equality.

The line used to be drawn between one man and one woman. If redrawn to 2 people, the next move to more than 2 people and between and human and beast (PETA is pushing Animal Rights) is simply a matter of enough hedonists disagreeing with your bigoted restrictions, bobcat…your pushing your morality on others.

Stop with the slippery slope argument. This is not rocket surgery. Marriage is an equal partnership between two consenting adults. Children and animals do not have the capacity to consent. Polygamy is inherently unequal inasmuch as one husband with, say, three wives makes the partnership 1/2 husband and 1/6 for each of the wives. Simple.

Um, sorry Jeff – wrong. Marriage is an equal partnership between one man and one woman. You are attempting to change it into something else and impose than new definition on others. If it can be changes to meet your wishes – where does the ability to redefine terms (and compel others to accept the new definition) end? The slippery slope argument is completely valid.

So not being ok with gay marriage makes me an anti-gay bigot? What if I’m fine with civil unions offering all of the same benefits of marriage without giving them them the distinction of “marriage” since it’s never been defined as anything but between a man a woman and no variation or combo platter? Am I still some radical gay bigot?

At this stage I throw the question back to those who support gay marriage, I’m more than willing to give same sex couples in a civil union all the same benefits as a arrived couple but I’m not willing to redefine the word so tell me what the problem is?

I consider myself a conservative leaning libertarian and I think my position is entirely fair to all parties.

Because what you’re asking for is known as “separate but equal”. The same legal entities (right, responsibilities, etc.) but it gets a different name.
We know from experience that “separate but equal” doesn’t actually work in practice. That “lesser” institution, (socially speaking) always is never quite that equal.

And for all of you claiming that civil unions are good enough – does that mean you all support and agree with the creation of such things? Because organized resistance to such efforts in the past, including Washington state’s “everything but the word” referendum a few years back, gives the impression that you don’t.

Society is hurt by the redefining of marriage. And that includes no-fault divorce and the flippant way many inmature heterosexuals enter into their sham commitments. Something doesn’t have to hurt me personally for me to feel the pain of what it causes. I’m not going to repeat what some of the other posters have written so much more eloquently than I could. Anything that undermines the secure foundations of the family is dangerous. We don’t really know what a world would look like without the father/mother/biological kids paradigm. I think it will look like a Mad Max world. I see hints of it forming in the news everyday. Am I a kook? Maybe I’m worried about nothing. In about 30 years I give you permission to get back to me and say “na na, you were wrong.”

So, you’re not just against gay marriage, you’re against divorce, too? Wow! That’s a real vote getter, especially among women. You’d rather two people stay in a loveless marriage or, worse, an abusive marriage (and abuse does not have to be physical; the vast majority of the time it is mental/emotional, which is almost impossible to prove) simply to “preserve the institution of marriage?” To “preserve the American family,” even if that family is a hellish one.

Even better, you “feel” the pain of the allegedly disintegrating American family. Last time I checked, though, “feeling” was subjective, a leftist way of making law. Truly, SoCons are the same as leftists, the only difference is whose ox is being gored.

And yet your position somehow is unpopular with the voting public. Go figure.

It’s because “gay marriage” is not an immorality–rather, it’s a definitional incoherency. It’s not that two persons of the same sex may not get married, it’s that they CANNOT–any more than I can enter into a legal contract with the color blue, and legislating its existence is no different from passing a law that defines how much an inch weighs. All three propositions are linguistically possible, but semantically empty.

Any judge that seriously entertains or helps enshrine any of the above notions has assigned himself reality-moulding powers that belong to no human being; he hasn’t made a statement about reality, he’s constructed it out of moonshine. That’s not merely lawless, it’s corrosive of the very rule of law itself. And that’s a precedent that damned well CAN come back to directly hurt me, and you, and every other citizen. Q.E.D.

” The rapid changes on both a technological and sociological level will result in a great social upheaval. The cataclysmic changes will result in considerable suffering, often referred to as the Hevlei Mashiah or Birthpangs of the Messiah. If the Messiah comes with miracles, these “birthpangs” may be avoided, but the great changes involved in his coming in the manner adopted by Maimonides may make these terrible travails inevitable.

Since in a period of such accelerated change parents and children will grow up in literally different worlds, traditions handed from father to son will be among the major casualties. The Talmud describes at length how there will be general dissatisfaction with the values of religion-in such a rapidly changing world, people will naturally be enamored with the new and dissatisfied with the old. Thus, the sages teach that neither parents nor the aged will be respected, the old will have to seek favors from the young, and a man’s household will become his enemies. Insolence will increase, people will no longer have respect, and none will offer reproof. Religious studies will be despised and used by nonbelievers to strengthen their cause, the government will become godless, academies will be places of indiscretion, and the religious will be denigrated.

In the generation when the Messiah comes, young men will insult the old, and old men will stand before the young [to give them honor]; daughters will rise up against their mothers, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law. The people shall be dog-faced, and a son will not be abashed in his father’s presence. It has been taught, R. Nehemiah said: In the generation of the Messiah’s coming impudence will increase, esteem be perverted. [Sanhedrin 97a]

The Wisdom of the learned will degenerate; fearers of sin will be despised; and the truth will be lacking. Youths will put old men to shame. [Sotah 49b]

Judaism will suffer greatly because of these upheavals. There is a tradition that the Jews will split up into various groups, each laying claim to the truth, as the Talmud says, “Our truth shall be divided into flocks” (Sanhedrin 97a). This will make it exceedingly difficult, almost impossible, to discern true Judaism from the false. This is the meaning of the prophecy, “Truth will fail” (Isaiah 59:15).

Maimonides, in his Epistle to Yemen even predicted that many will leave the fold of Judaism completely, without mali ciously intending to do harm to the Jewish people, and the nation shall suffer immensely as a result of their actions. This is how our sages interpret the prophecy, “The wicked shall do wickedly, and not understand” (Daniel 12:10)..

Of course, there will he some Jews who remain true to their traditions. They will realize that they are witnessing the death throes of a degenerate old order and will not be drawn into it. But they will suffer all the more for this, and be dubbed fools for not conforming to the liberal ways of the premessianic age. This is the meaning of the prophecy (Isaiah 59:15), “He who departs from evil will be considered a fool” (Sanhedrin 97a).”

I have posted the above several times over the years. Lately I take less and less time from my studies so I fall back upon repeating an old post. I enjoy PJM and have some ” friends ” here. There are some beautiful souls that participate and I am drawn to them.

If you could soar above the world, travel through time and space, see the vast expanse of the human condition from the beginning to near the end would you sit silent while the world consumes itself? I cannot. I am a simple person who has learned to study and to fear G-d. Not an easy task, especially in ” modern ” times. Everything that is happening today is happening according to G-ds Plan and His Promise. The writing is so large on the wall that only those who are willing to intentionally deceive themselves fail to see it.

What is happening in the USA is a small part of the global condition of humanity.

Countries are like people. They are capable of both Good and Evil. Most countries occupy that middle ground between the two. Sometimes Good sometimes not. And while Mankind is, for the most part, ignoring G-d the opposite is not true. G-d is no longer ignoring Man.

Why? There are many reasons. Too many to elucidate here. Suffice it to say that His Face is no longer hidden. These are matters of great significance. If one person grasps my words for what they are I am satisfied.

When the Tsunami struck Japan I posited that the event was Divine retribution for Japan having declared that Jews had no right to build in Jerusalem. I was called both a bigot and insane. I consider myself neither.

On Feb.10,2011 the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the following statement-

” The Government of Japan is concerned about the Jerusalem municipal planning committee’s approval of a plan to build housing units for Jewish people in the Sheih Jarrah of East Jerusalem. Such act goes against the efforts by the international community to resume the negotiations.

The Government of Japan does not recognize any act that prejudges the final status of the territories in the pre-1967 borders nor Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. Japan urges Israel to refrain from any unilateral act that changes the current situation in East Jerusalem.”

The day the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan the following Psalm was read-

” A psalm by David. Render to the Lord, children of the mighty, render to the Lord honor and strength. 2. Render to the Lord the honor due to His Name; bow down to the Lord in resplendent holiness. 3. The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders; the Lord is over mighty waters. 4. The voice of the Lord resounds with might; the voice of the Lord resounds with majesty. 5. The voice of the Lord breaks cedars; the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. 6. He makes them leap like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox. 7. The voice of the Lord strikes flames of fire. 8. The voice of the Lord makes the desert tremble; the Lord causes the desert of Kadesh to tremble. 9. The voice of the Lord causes the does to calve, and strips the forests bare; and in His Sanctuary all proclaim His glory. 10. The Lord sat [as King] at the Flood; the Lord will sit as King forever. 11. The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.”

Twenty thousand died in Japan.

The Holy City of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel was removed from the platform of the party of the man who would become President. Holy Matrimony was spat upon and the sin of homosexuality elevated to a societal norm. These things have consequences far beyond petty politics. They decide the fait of nations.

More than two thousand years ago the great sages set specific times for the say of Psalms. Each one to be recited on a specific occasion.

On the night hurricane Sandy destroyed much of the east coast of the United States also began a day of fasting and repentance. Repentance for , ” excesses and inappropriate behavior “.

The Slichot begins- ” We are encompassed by Mayim Ad Nefesh ( potentially fatal waters ), we have come into deep waters, the waves of the sea have engulfed us. ”

Just because some think G-d does not exist, or others claim , ” G-d is love “, makes neither true.

Posting here we are like tiny dim voices in a dark room. All are sleepers, gurgling in our sleep. The insane now run the nation, this and others, we are told to accept it as the rise of the young. So many things have built to this point, each barely ascertainable. You shouldn’t look at that tsunami as the face of G-d. Tsunamis come and go. In Japan the nuclear industry had become very careless, not that different than in the US, but in Japan the old cultural instincts prevented a fast enough discovery of the problems the nuclear facility was experiencing.

There was a tsunami, but the Japanese corporate cultural of irresponsibility in the face of real problems and cover-up had developed there long before. There was a tsunami, but the earthquake before it set the plant up for problems before it came in. There was a tsunami, but for the past fifty years that very beautiful area of Japan that was damaged by the fallout, and by the flooding was depopulated — moved to urban precincts like Tokyo. That’s a mercy.

The more fearsome things in Japan seem like its own national failings of psyche. Abysmal, death-spiral of a birthrate. Continuing xenophobia, a developing ageism. The xenophobia is so ingrained and so poisonous, one wonders if the deeper reason for Japan’s actions in WWII were a subconscious way of resisting its poison.

Japan still seeks oil too, it is like water to them. When they speak against Israel it is, I suspect, for that reason too. Their xenophobia keeps the Jewish dynamic in the world hidden from them. The Chinese understand it, the Japanese cannot.

And yesterday the nations of the world overwhelmingly voted to tear part of Jerusalem from the Jewish people. It will not happen. But by voting to do such a thing the nations have sealed their own fate.

This is remarkable on many levels.

The human right to own property on a moral basis is based, even to this day, on principles established by The Almighty in The Torah. The purchase of the burial place by Abraham for his wife Sara is the template. It has never and will never be improved. That burial place survives to this day. It is the oldest building in continual public use on the planet. It exists to this day as both a reminder and a lesson.

Shabbat Shalom and blessings from Jerusalem to all of you with open hearts and minds.

Your commentary regarding Japan is instructive. In addition, I believe Japan came under Judgement for its refusal to repent of its actions during WW II. Japan’s economic downturn, while instigated by its real estate and bank bubble, was co-incident with its refusal to make amends to China for its Rape of Nanking, and Korea for its abuse, especially of the so-called “comfort women”. Just before the demise of Japan, Inc. both China and South Korea had approaqched the government of Japan for acknowledgement and apologies for its WW II atrocities. Japan gave them the cold shoulder. I have always believed that was Japan’s chance for repentance.

Yes, good take on that, Joan. When China mainland was awarded most favored nation status by the US Congress a photo book was circulated among the congressional staff offices. A photo book of the rape of Nanking. It swayed many. After all, we favored Japan in trade, and look what they did and have never fully owned up to.

And Japan also remains a majority pagan nation despite exposure to the Truth, and has the sex perversion that goes with it. You know things are bad when there are vending machines that sell used panties. Meanwhile, a great multitude of young people are swearing off sex entirely, and not for religious reasons. As a result, the population of Japan is in a death spiral, compounded by a high suicide rate.

I can understand what you are saying and to a certain extent I can sympathize but you have to understand that social conservatives are not the aggressors and are (mostly) not the ones passing onerous laws.

For example, gay marriage laws are about forcing people who do not accept gay marriage to accept it. After all, gays could live in a married-like state now, and could be accepted by gay marriage supporters now as being ‘married’. They don’t though do they?

Why is it somehow less legitimate for Society/The Majority/The State to regulate individual sexual behavior than it is to regulate individual economic behavior? In both cases, individual acts, in the aggregate, can have remote social consequences. Society/The Majority/The State has regulated, or attempted to regulate individual sexual behavior since the dawn of civilization, and perhaps because that is just accepted as fact by a lot of people, few can really explain the social utility of such regulation. On the other hand, it is much easier to oppose such regulation on the ground of ‘individual freedom’.

Those who want Society/The Majority/The State to regulate individual economic behavior have a set of stock justifications for their program, while ‘social conservatives have pretty much allowed their opponents to define them and their issues by default.

My position on marriage. The only thing the gay lobby can’t have is the word marriage. I don’t see why the rest of us should be forced to acquiesce to this absurdity. You can have whatever legal arrangement you want to arrange voluntarily so long as it doesn’t involve children or the rest of us have to call it marriage.

My position on abortion. I’d rather lose every election and let my country slide into a Marxist barbarism than give up the fight on whether it’s legal or not to kill children.

It is good you’re pitching this to social cons as they’re the ones who would have to agree / sign on. Otherwise; we are just cutting off part of our coalition in favor of voters who won’t for us anyway (if we changed our stance).

Personally; I’d just like the government out of the defining marriage business. They can’t help abuse it and this is not the first time they have.

There is big difference between having morals and using government to enforce them. The federal government should not be used to enforce such things. How can we preach limited government we don’t practice it.

But drugs are going to be the real issue going forward. Here is Florida legal drug dealers set up shop selling performance enhancing steroids and growth hormone. Charging hundreds of dollars a shot for a drug that costs 8 bucks a dose retail. We also have pill mills churning out Oxycontin to half the nation. These people make millions and the bulk never face criminal action. On the other side of the USA, marijuana is sold at highly elevated prices as medicine and legalized in several states. High tech legal drugs like bath salts are widely available online just do a search for research chemicals. But these legal drugs are worse than the illegal ones.

We should learn a lesson from the tobacco war. Legalized products are easier to regulate and keep out of the hands of children. People have zero sympathy for the smoker. but the dealer and addict are people to be pitied.

We can make the moral case without using the force of government. We however cannot make the limited government argument unless we actually believe in limited government.

The trouble with that is that almost all laws are, in fact, morality-based commands. Why do we outlaw theft, rape, and assault, but because we believe it is wrong to commit those actions? The only exceptions are the minimally instrumental laws, like the choice of April 15 for a tax deadline, or the choice of the right over the left side of the road for driving. With those exceptions, every single law entails a choice to compel some to abide by a society’s mores.

It is a legitimate question on which basis we should decide which moral judgements should be enacted into law, and which not; what criterion we should use to make such a choice. But it is impossible to maintain an ethics-free notion of law.

The anti-discrimination laws are poised, just waiting for such a strategy of private assertion of social disapproval. The results would not be pretty. So unless you see the elimination of the anti-discrimination laws as a better target for social conservatives (and some libertarians would agree) this would be a non-starter. It’s not obvious that such a change in strategy would be a plus for socons.

The application will kill social cons though. It used to be “hate sin, but love the sinner”. Social debate allowed one to call the act of another evil. Now we need a law for everything. All because my government is kind and benevolent, but theirs is cruel and oppressive.

All governing inevitably comes at the end of a gun. Until our side (or theirs) decides to limit the governing to what really needs that level of force, we will continue our slide to the next authoritarian regime.

I tried to post a comment way up this thread a few minutes ago and was informed that I was posting too often. What? The post was my first here and my first anywhere at Pajamas in days. What’s going on?

“I am less sympathetic to the social conservative position on same-sex marriage, which seems to me a civil rights issue.”

I understand why you can think this. The problem with same-sex marriage is not the act itself but all the social consequences that will follow like night follows day.

We give the State the power to give life to artificial persons, in the form of corporations, foundations, trusts and the like. Nobody is confused by this government-defined fiction. We know that a corporation is not a real person. Where the left has a problem is where the Supreme Court has ruled, in Citizens United, that such “persons” have the right of free speech.

But another government-defined fiction that we have allowed for generations is that the State can also define “marriage” and who is “married” and who is not. But marriage predates any State because it is God who defines and defends marriage, not the State. Indeed, any “marriage” a State defines is just as much as legal fiction as when it tells us that a corporation is a “person” that has freedom of speech.

The State attempts to force us to recognize its power. One way is to presume the power to define who is

married and who is not. We cede this power in part because we allow the State to tax incomes and estates. To administer such taxing power, the State must define who it considers to be “married” and who is not. Just as when it defines a corporation to be a “person”, as silly as this would be to God, the State does not hesitate to define anyone it pleases as being “married”, totally apart from how God would define them.

Jesus, who was recognized as a prophet by all three monotheistic religions, is quoted in Matthew chapter 19 that from the beginning of humanity, it was God’s intent that marriage would only be one man and one woman. Scripture in many ways and places also tells us that God defines sexual morality and that people who refuse to practice that His morality simply do not qualify for His freely given gift of eternal life. (for example, see Ephesians chapter 5). Of course, people are free to believe whatever they want, but that does not change what God clearly said to us.

If you review the arguments advanced by supporters of same-sex marriage (like at HRC.ORG), you will find that many of them are related to taxation, inheritance and medical issues. But existing law addresses those and any defects in the law can be easily repaired apart from the issue of “marriage”.

I don’t want a government that can tell me what I may or may not do in the privacy of my own home or relationships. In a secular Constitutional Republic with a provision that prohibits Congress from making any law respecting religion, I have to allow others to have their own beliefs and morality. I can only be an advocate for the morality and beliefs that I think are true. I take my understanding of sexual morality from Scripture and that is where I learn that God considers sodomy to be an abomination to Him.

If a State decides that two (or more) people can marry, if that is all that happened, I could live with that because I don’t have to approve, change my beliefs or what beliefs I pass on to my children.

However, once gays and their supporters have sufficient influence with a State to redefine marriage, they don’t stop there. They use the State to forbid me from acting on my morality and beliefs. In fact, the State in some cases forces me to accommodation in their practices.

If I have children in public school, the State will insist on teaching them that gay marriage is just as normal as the God’s marriage. You will be sanctioned as a parent if you attempt to remove your child from such indoctrination.

If you run a business that could provide services to the public, you will be sanctioned if you decline to treat gays as non-gays. For example, if you run a wedding photography business, you will be sanctioned if you decline to photograph a gay wedding. This has already happened in California and New Mexico [1].

In short, gays will demand that non-gays accept them as moral equals, which they are not and cannot be. When the State says they are equal it is forbidden for a private citizen to dissent from that status. In doing so, they seek to force me to give them approval for something that I will never approve of. It is that last point that galls gays the most.

Curiously, when advocates of gay marriage are asked if their policy also would allow polygamy or polyandry, they recoil in horror and insist that it does not. However, logic demands that it does. I would ask how same-sex parents are going to react in the future when, for example, Utah public schools officials require that teachers instruct the children that LDS-related polygamy is just as “normal” as same-sex “marriage”. The fact that this will be an issue will show yet again that gay “marriage” is not about marriage at all it is about forcing the rest of us to approve of repugnant sexual immorality, something that LDS polygamists never demanded.

Bingo. That is the real question facing us. Will people with religious (or for that matter, secular) objections be permitted to refuse to take part in, or decline to accede to, or even to avoid celebrating SSM? The best evidence is that they will not, not for long, anyway.

The other fight, whatever one wishes to believe, is lost. The only battle left is for freedom not to conform, to dissent. That isn’t lost yet, but it is coming. (For what it is worth, my own view is that government should just drop marriage altogether, except in so far as there are children involved. There the state does have a legitimate role to play in defining who is responsible for them.)

Sorry if someone already stated this – but simply, I won’t go in anyone’s bedroom, but it is asking me to pay for their poor choices via medication, surgeries, etc that I can’t abide. When abortions are completely paid for out of the pockets of pro-abortionists, then I will drop the anti-abortion vote.

A lifestyle, if socially accepted with legal support, means that the accepting culture affirms the consequences of said style. Homosexuality constitutes the essence par excellence of a “culture of death”. Nothing can be more terminal than a society where homosexual values begin to seriously influence culture. Germany has a reproduction rate of 1.34 children per woman whereas 2.1 children per woman is necessary for the reproductive continuation of the society. This means that Germany will contain 46% less Germans by 2100 and be effectively extinct by 2200. Germany with its birth control, limited eugenics, homosexual partnerships, one mother/one child families, and a decreasing traditional family constitutes a culture of (species) death. Spain and Poland are even less re-productive and Europe as a whole is dying out. (Good ridance!) Europe constitutes a culture of death of some 400 million. Or???? It is just plain simple math!!!

America currently has a reproductive rate of 2.06 children per woman. Just about makes it. But, the natives bear (if my memory is correct) only 1.8 children per woman, the rest made up by immigrants (and their children adopt then the cultural norm). According to “The Guttmacher Institute” there are about 2 million women with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies each year. Obama’s HHS Mandate makes the choice to abort (which reduces population) free of cost to said group of women. If all such women would avail themselves, we would have 2 million less children per year to add to 1.25 million abortions per year (that is a hell of alot of death, no?). So, America too is threaten by the European syndrome of non-reproducing unto the death of our “exceptional” culture.

Homosexuality, if it is raised to a “marriage” (sic) form, will influence cultural values. Already women’s libs do not reproduce themselves, perhaps having one child. Between homosexuality and women’s lib and the already native lack of reproduction and we have a culture of death in formation. Homosexuality, however, in distinction from all other forms of cohabation, is 100% sterile in structure. Raising homosexuality to a cause celebre for conservatives in context of the current culture would exponentially increase the value preferences against having children. Sex as homoseuxally entails totally a separation between sex and child bearing. Childlessness of necessity ensues. Homosexuality might not hurt anyone individually, but species-wise it destroy life.

Before going on, I note that, during my adult work life, my two best friends were homosexuals, I went regularly with my wife dancing at a hetreo/homo-dance bar, even played bouncer, taught young downtrodden homosexuals karate in order to aid their ego-develoment, and participated as if homosexual in the gap gatherings of homosexuals. So, my life evinces absolutely NO homosexual phobia. I would like for homosexuals to be left alone and even have some legal form of union barring child adoption (= aping family life). But, I draw a religious line (and my religious line favors the family as the societal ideal for sexuality and the continuation of the species) the VERY moment that homosexuals (and their allies, left or right) will not leave alone and in peace the values supportive of my ongoing cultural reality. In other words, if homosexuals parrot (often mockingly) “family lefe” demanding “marriage”, they change the definition and function of marriage in society to mere personal relationships (with or problably without children). That implicit ideal is rejected by me as it affirms on principle a culture of death. On a pragmatic basis, should (conservative) homosexuals just want to cool it and retreat into society (instead of “fundamentally transforming” it, viz., be left alone), I concur. If, however, a culturally changing intervention is pushed, I will cease political cooperation whatsoever, even if, say, conservative economics goes to cultural oblivion. I value a culture whose principles affirm (species) life.

Good luck Roger…but you can’t win this battle by ceding the moral arguments for liberty to those who are pushing for a “Judeo-Christian” state.

You are participating in this relatively modern battle between the Right’s Judeo-Christianism vs the Left’s nihlism. A rational humanism has always been liberty’s best friend and we’re in desperate need of intellectuals who understand this.

The responsibility of protecting the unalienable right to live, makes abortion a Federal concern.

And since human development post-conception is a continuous process, setting the line of demarcation between life and “tissue” at any point besides conception is an arbitrary choice, that can be changed/augmented at the whim of our leaders to make it more convenient for those who live after the “procedure” to apply it to those who will not. As I am approaching senior-citizen status, this is a legitimate personal concern.

As for same-sex marriage, legal recognition of heterosexual marriage has been a stabilizing influence upon virtually every human society, regardless of culture or religion.

Now, some are pushing to re-define that legal recognition, with little or no regard for how that stabilizing effect will be affected by it and/or how vulnerable the institution will become to further, perhaps arbitrary revision by setting this precedent … simply to allow a few of us to feel warm and fuzzy about their lifestyle choices – and to give those few and their political allies their very own equivalent to the Race Card to muzzle their critics, which is why “civil union” or other alternatives to re-defining marriage is not enough for SSM proponents.

Notice that no Scripture was invoked in any of the above statements. These issues go beyond religious belief, Progressive rhetoric notwithstanding.

As for us so-cons: Google “Priesthood of the Believer” – then count the number of “flavors” of Christian churches in your phone book. Maybe then you will understand that we are not the threat to your liberty the media makes us out to be … and in fact, that it is the Progressives who are out to impose their blind faith in the omniscience of an elite few upon us all, as the One True Way, by establishing EXCLUSIVE access to our public institutions because faith in human omniscience is not considered “religion” and is therefore not subject to the Establishment Clause.

I have two 20 something sons, who recently visited to watch football and brought some friends. They are all to various degrees fiscal conservatives, critical of people who don’t act responsibly and do not not want to subsidize others bad behavior.

So far so good, they are natural republicans on economic issues.

They also despise the Akins’ of the world. Having many gay friends they consider opposition to gay marriage an affront and they find the obsession with criminalizing pot smoking stupid given the ridiculously easy access.

This made them very reluctant to vote Rebub, in fact several of them voted Libertarian and others would not vote Dem but could not vote Repub either because of the social issues. They stayed home.

The Republican party would gain dramatically among young people if it followed basic conservative principles.

Deal with the world as it is, not the way we wish it was, and small government includes staying out of peoples personal lives even in matters where we might disagree.

That’s because your sons priorities are in the wrong place, as are many young people, who have no concept of the importance of family, being young with brains filled with mush. If you (or your sons) choose not to vote, because of your disagreement with a minor part of a party’s platform,on which virtually no candidate ran, when only one party is responsible enough to handle economic issues, then they are doing their country a disservice. Romney never once came out and said he was going to do anything about abortion or gay marriage but he was painted by the press and bloggers like he was going to ban them by executive fiat- the problem is, your sons and their friends, instead of listening to what was actually being said (or in this case, not said) by the candidates, and focusing on what Jon Stewart or whatever pop culture icon they find so informative and edgy, they’ve shot themselves right in the foot. I’ll attribute it, simply, to be young and failing to understand there are extremely important issues, like the economy, and their are wedge issues and the liberals use wedge issues to keep people who should be staunch conservatives from voting. That’s not the social cons fault- its the fault of the people somehow being influenced to vote (or not vote) on wedge issues.

the so-cons become the fault line when the party at large refuses to disavow the likes of Akin and Muordock, and when it pretends that Bob and Steve getting married is a threat to the republic. The issue is the redefinition of a word; it hardly signals the end of Western society.

Romney’s loss owes a great deal to bigotry from within, all those god-fearin’ folks who just couldn’t pull the lever for a (gasp!) Mormon. The Catholics on Fox channel led the cheers for the conservative d’jour from Bachmann to Perry to Noot to Ricky from PA, all of whom are little more than right-wing statists. One guy knew something about economics and which party was the first to call him a vulture capitalist? That would be the alleged part of business.

Before rightfully accusing the left of hypocrisy regarding tolerance and diversity, the so-cons could take a look inside their own house.

So as I understand it, you and your sons are more than happy to accept the Claire Mccaskill’s of the world to decide the political fate of our society? Were your deeply thoughtful sons and their socially concerned friends aware that Mccaskill’s husband used the congressional dinning room to cut business deals for stimulus dollars?

Oh well, So you truly believe what you said?……”The Republican party would gain dramatically among young people if it followed basic conservative principles.

Deal with the world as it is, not the way we wish it was, and small government includes staying out of peoples personal lives even in matters where we might disagree”

Thanks Jacknine. We are now stuck with Obamacare. That giant piece of entitlement will push it’s way into every tiny corner of your life. But at least it wont because of some moralistic purist pushing his personal views onto me so as to control my life.

I seriously think you and your boys with their uninformed friends just might not get it.

The application will kill social cons though. It used to be “hate sin, but love the sinner”. Social debate allowed one to call the act of another evil. Now we need a law for everything. All because my government is kind and benevolent, but theirs is cruel and oppressive.

All governing inevitably comes at the end of a gun. Until our side (or theirs) decides to limit the governing to what really needs that level of force, we will continue our slide to the next authoritarian regime.

Two thumbs up plus eight finger up for t heSimon article and for Tony Lee’s article in Breitbart. We are finally wising up.

Truth must be spoken to power, especially in the Republican Party. Mitt Romney did not run his own campaign — stark difference from Reagan. The real Romney may have been the tiger in the first debate. His handlers changed all that in the last two and restored the President on the road to a second term. Romney snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Mitt Romney was and is a good man. He did not understand the basic rule of Illinois politics writ large on the national level. To win, a Republican must be at least — in the polls — five points ahead on day absentee voting opens. Anything less is will find the Democrats turning up the turnout.. “Statistically even, within the margin of error” is Democrat pollster-speak for “You’re gonna lose.”

Good men win these days only when perceived as being a crusader — a man with a defined plan for which he can be held responsible by the voters. A winning campaign would establish its nominee as a person which understood the single issues facing the people but asked them to put those to one side while the external (terrorism) threat was defeated and the internal (debt and the economy) threat was contained and reversed.

In my mind, a winning campaign would also have deferred social issues to the lowest political level possible — toe states and through them to the localities at which social intercourse takes place.

The last social issue in this regard was the Temperance issue. Its proponents organized from the bottom up, achieving local and the State approvals before reaching the zenith of an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and we had national Prohibition. After fourteen years, this Amendment was repealed on a Federal level. Some States and localities in other States continued to be Dry. This is the level on which Social Issues need to be settled.

Roe vs. Wade should have been returned to the States on that basis aalone.

When candidates speak in generalities, the people look at all candidates as politicians. They vote not for altruism but for entitlements. They become single issue minded. They expect something. The “oppo-research” teams provide value to a candidate by targeting issues on which a candidate is flawed, from integrity and moral principles to not willing to deliver the goods to a single issue sector.

Today, if in Ohio a significant voting block of Fire Worshipers came into view — say ten percent of the registered voters — oppo-research would be able to identify positions taken by the candidates publicly or privately in the past, pollsters would be able to identify group members and social research methodology would target prospective voters electronically — and on the surface of Lake Ohio there would hardly be a ripple. Targeted Social Media users is an area which the Democrats have mastered.

Fear and envy won the Democrats the Social single issue battle in the national election. This carried forth into the Senate and he House races as well. State offices and legislatures fell on this emotion as well. Republicans were characterized as fascists, seeking to dictate from the right.

I’m really sick of social conservatives defining the Republican Party, especially since most of the issues they are fighting about are really abstract moral questions that are never going to be addressed by bureaucrats.

At the end of the day, even if you could somehow run roughshod over the will of the people and ban abortion, it’s going to be about as effective as the War on Drugs. And it is pure fantasy to think abortion will EVER be banned, even if Roe vs Wade is overturned, EVERY single state will have some form of legal abortion on the books.

The issue is dead as a political issue, the right-to-life movement should be about changing hearts and minds rather than passing laws. I believe abortion is immoral, even in cases of rape, but it is absolute suicide to try and pass laws like that.

I know this loyal Republican is no longer going to tolerate the Akin wing of the Party. ANY Republican against a rape exception for abortion needs to be run out on a rail.

Nobody gets what they want. You get to choose between bad and worse. Would you be better off with social issues left to the individual states and a more fiscally conservative Federal government or what you got?

really, If this is the course the GOP takes it will certainly be finished in the South (well golly, Sgt. Carter, that’s about what they won isn’t it?) The South is rock solid GOP because its the Bible Belt. Throw that out and there’s no reason to support the party. Some other party will emerge and the Socialists will have permanent or at least until financial collapse ushers in fascism of the left or right, total hegemony.

Abstract moral questions? Check out what occured in Washington state. Or Hutchinson Kansas. In both locations churches now can be forced to have their property used to conduct gay weddings. Do you really think gays will stop at any accomodation? Ultimately, their goal is to force churches to conduct gay weddings regardless of what the church’s believe.

And if you remove social conservatives from the Republican Party, all you will be left with are Liberals.

Brady Carl, You are confused. The social conservatives do not “define” your republican party The left is defining your republican party. Thus you now have what you consider a good excuse to ostracize those you probably never got along with in the first place.

So look at your own thought process. You readily admit that overturning Roe V Wade is a near impossiblity and if it were, it would dumped back to the states. Thus you make this near impossiblity the Rubicon of no return?

Like the other 3rd party cranks, once you cross that line you then have won no mans land. Enjoy your permanent position beneath the yoke of what ever the left wants.

The *first* reason for allowing a government to have any power over others is the protection of the innocent from violence. Even pure libertarians agree to this.

The case for sanctions against abortion is as fundamental as the case for having a government at all.

Unless we believe that the right to life of the unborn is less than the right to abortion of the mother, abortion is the most extreme civil liberties violation – at whatever stage that balance tips.

The best way to treat this, however, is the way we deal with murder: federalism. Murder is usually a state crime. If SCOTUS hadn’t interfered in the federalist democratic process, this would not be a huge national issue today. If some state wants to allow murder, that’s their business.

Social-cons are not going to roll over on this because of some electoral argument. But we social cons would do best if we worked on returning abortion to the state level – which, in fact, is what we mostly have been doing for some time.

I had to do a find for “federalism” because for all of this discussion only two commenters have mentioned the way out. Simon is right that social issues will keep costing Republicans elections at the federal level, but the social conservatives are right that throwing social issues under the bus is a loser. Abandoning the issues will just keep social cons at home.
Our government can already deal with these issues by pushing them to the more local states where individuals have greater control of laws and whether to remain under those laws. We don’t abandon social issues, but we don’t fight them at the federal level either. My husband and I had this discussion on Nov. 7th:
Every GOP candidate for federal office should now have the same answer when asked about gay marriage or abortion or whatever lefty wedge issue: “my view is that the people of my State should decide for themselves how that should be handled in their State and that the federal government should not interfere with their sovereign right to do so”. That works in California (let people wed their cats if that’s what they want) and in Oklahoma (man and a woman only, thank you). Attack national agenda groups as seeking to infringe on the people’s sovereignty WITHOUT needing to attack the underlying cause. We are never going to persuade California to be Oklahoma and vice versa – and that’s OK and exactly consistent with the Founders’ design. We can turn social issues to our advantage if we make the issue one of freedom to differ.

I’m all for overturning Roe vs Wade and having abortion decided by individual states, but if all 50 states have some form of legal abortion, will pro-lifers abide by that and move on? Somehow I doubt it.

It seems that social conservatives really don’t actually believe there’s ever going to be a government solution to mankind’s immorality, they just want politicians that are more preachers than public servants to parrot what they heard in Church on Sunday. It’s all about symbolism.

SoCons cost us the Senate, period, and in my opinion led to Romney’s loss. the War on Women meme worked, we had the largest gender gap in several generations.

I’m fine if the SoCon extremists want to take their ball and go home. We need a new coalition, this one can’t win elections anyway. Even in the reddest of states, their candidates went down hard.

Lets see the Dems have blacks, Latinos, Asians, the dependent class , unions, government employees, skanks, gays , brainwashed college students and a couple of other groups I forgot. Oh yeah the media and Hollywood.
So you jettison social conservatives and form a new coalition. What groups are you aiming at, left handed taxidermists, stamp collectors , disabled window washers? Should be a powerful movement.

On gay marriage, even simpler: have your church declare that it does not perform “marriage” and does not seek government authority to do so — all church members should have civil ceremonies if they seek governmental status for their union.

However, the church will offer a wholly separate rite of “Holy Matrimony” to form the union in the sight of God. This rite will only be offered to couples consisting of one man and one woman….

Sorry Mr. Simon, the whole foundation of government is based on morality. The economic system and many regulations are based in morality.

You cant have your cake and eat it too.

There is morality and there is immorality and never the tween shall meet.

Nihilism, Hedonism, Moral and Cultural Relativism, Multiculturalism, Diversity are all methods of “defining deviancy down.” And that is exactly what we are getting…any behavior no matter how destructive (or immoral) to the individual or society is being not just tolerated but subsidized and promoted.

The assault on Israel and it’s delegitimization as a Jewish state is part and parcel to this assault on European Christian states and order. Be careful what you wish for. You reap what you sow.

“But first, a heavy dose of reality: Unlike abortion, where public opinion is going in the social conservative direction for various reasons (including sonograms), on gay marriage, it’s the fourth quarter, the score is about 80-0 and you’re on the your own five yard line with two minutes to go.”

Really? You should get out more, Mr. Simon.

31 states, a majority of the Union, have amendments banning “Same-Sex Marriage”…it WOULD have been and SHOULD be 32, but the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th District saw fit to veto the expressed will of the citizens of California in re: Proposition 8…so much for democracy.

The fact of the matter is that it is the Gay Cult Lobby and their allies who are backed up against their goal line, and they know it. This is why it is the Gay Cult Lobby that seeks to use the government to enforce acceptance of what is,(or should be), anathema to everyone who claims to be a Jew or a Christian.

Frankly I think arguing for Judeo-Christian values within the contextual framework of the United States is a lost cause because the media is not an honest broker to inform the public of the facts about homosexuality…anymore than it has been fair and impartial in cases of gender or race:

What race are the suspects that the police are seeking?

When all was said an done, was Lt. Kara Hultgren a lousy pilot or was she not?

The conclusion that I draw is inescapable…since we do not all share the same values, we are not one people. And therefore we should not be one nation,”… under God, indivisible”.

Why are we expending so much energy against each other in maintaining this fiction? What would Blue philosophy gain over Red? What would Red gain over Blue?
In neither case would it have been worth the effort.

At some point in a failed marriage the best and healthiest thing to do is to drop the arguments and walk away from each other.

From Wikipedia: Australia uses various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. Under this system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference. The preferential system was introduced in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk.

There is a hidden blessing in the recent election, Obama now has to manage the collapse, and there is time for a public debate on how to move back to a limited government free market model that emphasizes transparency for real.

Instant runoff voting will allow libertarians to participate in the debate and the solutions in a way not possible under the current two party monopoly.

IMO, Romney lost because of the abortion issue. Obama succeeded in painting the face of the GOP as that of a ranting pro-lifer whose only goal was to finally reverse Roe. It worked. That issue is also the main reason so many libertarian oriented people do not get involved in the GOP at the local level.

I am a retired electronic designer and small company owner and a Life Member of the Libertarian Party. The election in one way was very libertarian in its reaction against the perceived GOP goal of overturning Roe. The ‘keep the government away from my body’ meme can translate into ‘keep the government out of my economic life’ and into ‘end government secrecy’ very easily.

IMHO transparency is the only solution to the world we are moving into. It is the answer to replacing Dodd Frank and solving almost all the other challenges of a rapidly evolving world civilization.

These times look very much like the period of Unraveling described in The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe. How we handle the Crisis will determine the future of mankind. If you have not read Fourth Turning, you should IMHO. Here is a link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fourth-Turning-ebook/dp/B001RKFU4I

Followers of PJ Media are uniquely positioned to move public opinion toward Instant Runoff, and this seems to me to be an unusually good time to try to get it implemented. I can’t see any downside.

Its decades of successful use in Australia should make it non-threatening.

Get rid of no-fault divorce and entitlements to single mothers who aren’t widows and make child support optional (since a man has no say in whether or not a woman stays pregnant) as long as abortion is legal and most of these problems largely dissipate. Make the age of consent the age of majority and along with it adult responsibilities and the problems even further diminish. When consequences are directly tied to actions people tend to become wiser and more cautious.

Everyone focuses on rights but most bailout when it comes to the other side of the coin; responsibilities. The so-cons should push to couple back responsibilities to rights.

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

–

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.

I like Ayn Rand but I disagree with her for the most part on abortion. I believe that we should stop funding it first and foremost. Kick it down to the state level and let the states decide what they want to do with abortion. Keep it legal, make illegal except in the case of extreme circumstances(rape, threat to the mothers life etc.) etc.

I do find it interesting that Rand said raising a child is a life long responsibility, yet is in favor of terminating an unwanted pregnancy, which eliminates the parties involved for being responsible for creating life. Color me confused. Then again Rand was an atheist so I very much doubt she believed in a soul(forgive me if I’m wrong)which for me factors heavily in my belief.

If that argument made a lick of sense then their would be no moral imperative not to charge up trillions in debt and pass it on for posterity to pay off, at the expense of their own living standards, and the benefit to the currently living.

Roger, I consider myself a conservative who leans libertarian. I would love to strike a deal with libertarians along the lines of: let’s have consevatives stop pushing FedGov involvement in social issues, push those to the states to decide at as close to a populist level as each state’s constitution allows, in exchange for which libertarians will stop acting like liberals & gleefully gutterizing the culture.

I would argue that limited govt requires a conservative culture. Culture, peer pressure, social taboos and social institutions like church, synogogue and family are, in a conservative culture, the primary mechanisms whereby antisocial & costly irresponsible behavior is kept in check. Trashing & discarding these opens the door to the nanny state as the primary mechanism whereby antisocial behavior is punished. (or subsidized, and all sorts of Orwellian codes of thoughtcrime invented so that the nanny state can still justify its Jabba-like massiveness & the tax dollars it hoovers up by the trillions)

Small government, IOW, is for mature people only. People who self-regulate daily and who teach self-regulation to their children. People who, yes, mind their own beeswax about others’ private behavior but who are also gutsy enough to call down the shame when weaselry is taken into the street with a bullhorn.

The problem is, almost nobody in our society seems to believe they should feel shame about anything anymore. Ever. And these same people utterly incapable of and hostile to shame count as their motal enemies anyone who does try to invoke shame.

Shame cultures are confident cultures, i.e. citizens know what they believe, know what is expected of them and place a high value on social cohesion. When a culture is robbed of its confidence — when it is systematically taught & ultimately persuaded that it is a “bad” culture, that its beliefs are ignorant, bigoted and hurtful — then guess what, most people don’t feel they have any standing to hold their neighbors or even their own family members to account.

Shaming only works en masse, when individuals are confident that enough other individuals will have their back.

Public morality and civility have been almost utterly trashed in America. Who did this trashing? Liberals, primarily, but I regret to say that too many libertarians in recent decades have joined the pile on. Libertarianism in the popular culture no longer wears the face of an ultra-capable Robert Heinlein hero but a potty-mouthed South Park cartoon brat. Seriously? This is who libertarians want to carry their banner? You guys can do better. Way better.

YES, humor is a great sales tactic for a ideas, and comedy is a great vehicle to introduce ideas into public consciousness. But in the end, if what people see is adolescent humor and if they come away with the impression that you advocate ” individual liberty” so you can (A) smoke pot, (B) boink the person of your choice, and (C) swear like sailors and expose genitalia on national television … then I’d say you have only yourselves to blame if other people conclude that libertarians, and by extension libertarianism, are not to be taken seriously.

I think you have a point. The reaction of the christian moral absolutists is predictable. They are just big government collectivists with a different holy book than the Marxists.

The US is never going to outlaw abortion. Want proof? Notice that in 40 years of squawking about it, the Pro-life movement has not even been able to outlaw partial birth abortions. What is more, when our candidates say asinine stuff about babies fathered by rapists we lose elections we should have won. It is time to return to; I am against abortion personally but it is up to the woman to decide. I am sick of losing winnable elections over this issue.

Ditto for Gay marriage. No body’s business but their own. I really don’t give a darn.

I really feel that the key to recapturing the middle, which is where victory lies,
is to offer a smaller government that interferes in people’s lives less and is more likely to return us to prosperity.

All the other things Conservatives and Libertarians hold dear depend on us winning elections and I am sick of losing because of two divisive issues that are sacred cows for a bunch of moral absolutists.

There really are just two types of political parties, Collectivists and Individualist. Both the Left and Right are largely Collectivists. Compassionate Conservatism translates to taking other people’s money to do “Big Things” Social Conservatives think are good deeds. Let me keep my money and do good deeds on your own dime. Big government telling people what to do smells the same which ever party is at the helm.

As a fiscal conservative with an agnostic lack of religious affiliation I agree with you in principle. Too much attention has been put on “key issues” of big government social conservatives who want to dictate that people must live by their religious values, and not enough emphasis on getting the federal government out of all people’s lives and pockets. It has long been an uneasy alliance among people who desire fiscal sanity, and the people who desire religious control over people’s lives. The association has long been the Christian religious dictate to follow some fiscally conservative principals rather than any desire for a limited government interference in people’s lives. When many social conservatives talk, what they want is to use fiscal conservatives to sign on board with their social principals in order to win elections.

Personally I have no problems with a basic Christian religious morality, but much like with “liberals” it is not enough that basic Christian morals are instilled within our legal structure, they also want the strictures of their particular prefered dogma inculcated throughout the nation as well. They will often gladly fight each other over the particulars of that dogma too.

I personally find that the more often they speak about the “rightness” of their position the more they start to sound like Islamist extremists pushing for “Sharia Law” throughout the globe. The time has long come for fiscal conservatives to decide if making common cause with people who do not want less government interference in our lives is in itself counter productive. Much like with the Catholic Church it is clear to see that the appeal of greater control over people’s behavior is more important to many of them than the concept of freedom.

No I am not advocating that fiscal conservatives flee from having morals, values, and virtue. However, I am advocating getting the federal government out of the business of dictating what those are for everyone. So yes I would say that as I also grow older a more federalist position of individual state experiments are better for the health of the nation. I also think that the well being of the people suffers when the federal government imposes a universal national mandate which forces everyone to “eat the same dogfood flavored” lowest common denominator uniform government social policy.

I don’t need any holy book or big guy in the sky who will roast me alive for all of eternity to know that it is wrong to lie, cheat, steal, hurt people, or kill them. Just having empathy for the next guy and realizing they are fellow humans, not objects to be manipulated for your own gain tells me how to behave.

At the same time I don’t want the government to tell people what they can believe as long as their church doesn’t do stuff like human sacrifice.

But beyond enforcing English Common Law minus the parts that regulate private sex acts between consenting adults and adult use of intoxicants, and doing those things listed in Section 8 of the Constitution, I want the government out of people’s lives.

I am sure the sophistry on slavery makes you feel clever and demonstrates your moral superiority.

However, we are as likely to bring back slavery as we are to outlaw abortion.

I am sick of losing elections, and as a result our Republic, so a religious minority can take a morally superior stance. Moral grandstanding on abortion is giving the country over to the looters. I place saving the country ahead of your lost cause.

“If you are sick of losing elections, then join the Socialist Party of Inclusion, the winners with History on their side.”

My loyalty is not to your holy book and its laws but to the USA and its Constitution. You may be willing to lose our freedom to preserve your religious purity, but I am not. I fear the Socialist hell we are descending into and want to save the country from it for my own sake and for my child and her children.

Here you clearly see the attitude of the Christian Right. They believe they have the right to dictate GOP policy and anyone who disagrees needs to get out. This is why the GOP should tell these people to be go start their own party. As long as these fanatics need to be pandered to we will lose enough of the middle to stay the permanent minority. The biggest pile of available votes are those in the middle who are sick of the Nanny/Police State, but as long as we are viewed as the Party of God we will be unable to get those people to listen to us.

I would have no trouble with civil marriage for gay folks, if that’s all that were going on. However that’s only half the story. If you think the LGBT coalition will settle for that you’re sadly mistaken. Once they get ‘gay marriage’ over the legality threshold, they will immediately start suing to force churches to solemnize their marriages. The goal is not equal rights, it is to destroy anyone who disagrees with them; they are a collection of petty tyrants. I refer to the movement, not all gay people.

I’m a Mormon; we had our temples taken away by the Federal Government once before. Being forced to solemnize marriages in our temples is simply intolerable, yet that is the goal of these petite fascists, and they will never stop short of that because of any compromise on our part. The left is the aggressor in the social wars, and they have no intention of compromising; only our side is supposed to do that. I’m sick of compromising over and over, moving slowly towards their dream-of fascist state, and of being told endlessly that if we only just give a little more the fight will be over and we’ll no longer have to be involved, but can go back to our own knitting.

It takes only one foe to breed a war, not two; and those who have not swords can still die upon them. The left is fighting to destroy everything good and worthwhile in the world, and I don’t see how compromising with them will save anything. They hate the middle class, authors of everything that was ever good in history, and they will not give up until there are only two classes: the bosses and the slaves. That is communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, Jacobinism, progressivism, Democratic socialism etc summed up in five words.

I’m sick of calling a tail a leg. The fascists who hide among the Democrats are the enemies of America and all decent human beings in the universe. Time to start naming them properly.

A big tent is meaningless without common principles. I’ll support the GOP eliminating opposition to gay “marriage” from its platform if it also implements a plank promising to protect religious liberty for those people who do not wish to support homosexual “marriage” through their churches, businesses, or other organizations.

This support for religious liberty should be able to be assumed, but the Obamacare mandate clarifies that religious liberty is no longer a core American value.

Remove all references to marriage or spouse from the IRS code, ie no head of household, married filing jointly, married filing seperately, etc.., everyone just the same. I realize that one reason for MFJ is that the feds recognize that the non-working spouse (typically female wife) is in fact working but just not bringing in cash. I think that removing these various statuses would take much of the wind out of the gay marriage sails. Let the states do whatever they want but keep the feds out of it.

I have always believed that the Tax Code should treat all Americans equally as individuals, with no preference for status, and that that would respond to some of the legitimate concerns of gay Americans.

Mind your own beeswax indeed! Truely words to live by. Perhaps if more concervatives followed this advice, we would not be constantly trying to figure out what went wrong in whatever last election. I’ve been observing politics for most of my life and it never fails to amaze me when concervatives loose they tend to look everywhere but in the mirror. “Those marxist bastards cheated”, probably so. What is anyone doing about it? “Those minorities just vote on skin color” a distinct possibility. Have you spoken to anyone in any minority community? Or do you stay in your little echo chamber and rant about those immoral others? That’s what I see from what I guess would be about a third of the comments on any given consevative site. Do you not believe that individuals of the liberal persuasion surf by and read some of the judgemental vitriol on these comment threads? Trust me they do, just as I cruise by to examine their sites. I neither want nor do I need any government telling me how to live my life, but so long as we keep assisting the liberals in their quest for even more power by chasing away any who might be inclined to listen, I fear that from here on out, they will be telling us all exactly how it’s going to be. Ok, I will now desist with the incoherent babbling.

I’ve advocated that for years.
The problem remains that the social “conservatives” are simply just as totalitarian in certain matters as the most eager “progressive” to the point that the term “social conservative” is simply an oxymoron.
You can be conservative in social matters, but the moment you demand government enforce those views you flip from being a conservative to being at best a fiscally restrained Marxist, and no amount of whining will change that simple reality.

Let us note that the worst social experiment ever inflicted on this country – prohibition – came about as a result of a union of “progressive reformers” and “social conservatives” and understand the alliance was predicated on a shared belief in control of the private life.
Social “conservatives” are fond of bringing up slippery slope threats of where gay marriage can lead. Well, that same slippery slope exists and threatens us with their desire to grant government such control of marriage.
First government determines the sex of the person you can marry.
Then government further restricts the age of the person you can marry.
Next government declares whether you must or must not marry at all.
Ultimately government decides every aspect, including how many children, if any, you are allowed to have, how they must be raised and educated, and more.
All because social “conservatives” are determined to imitate “progressives” in granting government total control over marriage.
No thanks.
Theistic tyranny is just as unpalatable as atheistic tyranny.

You can be conservative in social matters, but the moment you demand government enforce those views you flip from being a conservative to being at best a fiscally restrained Marxist, and no amount of whining will change that simple reality. — Poster

Just as the USA was equally abhorant as the USSR in the Cold War, heh?

The Reactionaries are just as bad as the Marxist Revolutionaries.

It is the oldest conundrum in the book, do you effectively counter a dangerous and destructive ideology by effective means that run counter to your principles….in order to defend them. For example the Nationalization of the Abortion conflict via Roe V Wade. Are we just supposed to let that ride? …because heh, that is only appropriate for discussion at the State level.

Sorry Charlie. You are just like the old Soviet apologists who railed against the US global policy of containment and counter revolution. A fool twice over. What the Communists themselves called a “useful idiot.”

Marxist’s have used Federal overeach via the Incorporation of a radical interpretation of the Establishment Clause to infringe upon Christian speech and expression in the public institutions. Yet it is Santorum and Akin that are just as bad for moving to counter this. They are Christian Totalitarians, for advocating for Free Expression of Christians. You are a tool.

For years I’ve been a fiscal conservative with a decidedly libertarian bent when it comes to most social issues. What you do behind closed doors in your own home with consenting adults is not my concern. Want to marry your pet goat or your same-sex partner? Have at it.

I was born just two years after the end of WWII. I’ve been educated – and have educated myself out of curiosity – on WWII – on what Hitler managed with a compliant or ignorant German people. I’ve known more than a handful of people over the years that had a small number tattooed on their wrist. A few not so much older than I. What has always puzzled me is this fanatical desire on the part of men to lord power over their fellow man. A sickness I suppose and something I’ll never quite grasp. It would seem that the conditions that were present in the middle 30′s that led to the creation of the Nazi state – the economic uncertainty – the tensions between countries – these conditions are leading us forward towards events that we cannot yet clearly see. You’d have to be either very ignorant of what is going on today in the world or have a difficult time adding 2+2 to fail to see the parallels between the mid 30′s and today. The world is becoming more dangerous by the day.

So what does being a social conservative have to do with current/coming events? Well for one – it won’t be a conservative that pulls our bacon out of the coming ‘fire’ – whatever that may be. Not that I trust a conservative to do the right thing when events begin unfolding at an increasing rate – one event after the other in a nearly overwhelming manner. But I trust someone like Obummer even less to be able to handle a serious crisis.

My point in all this? Take the time to listen to the progressive side of talk radio when you get the chance. At least one would like to behead conservatives. Well the progressives say – you know he was only joking – right? I don’t know that – do you?

Here’s what he said:

““These tea bag bastards, who by the way, I just wish they would all just go away, or like in Passover, I just wish there was an angel of the lord that would pass over but instead of killing the first born in all the households of Egypt, just wipe out all the tea-baggers. Just, you know, the terrible swift sword . . . (repeatedly makes sounds mimicking that of a sword slicing through the air) . . . Lop their heads off.””

I guess they only believe in God when they want Him to do their dirty work eh? Bring on the sword Mike – but do be careful of my 9mm.

Events happen fast – seemingly absurd ideas spewed out can suddenly bloom into actions on the part of others. I cannot stress this enough – be ready! For anything!

If, in today’s America, you give people a choice between power-hungry politicians that are going to frog-march rape victims to jail for aborting a fetus and power-hungry politicians that are going to give them “social programs” in exchange for their support, then the majority will choose the social programmers every time – even many who oppose abortion on demand or gay marriage.

And the atmospherics are *obvious* aren’t they? It is *easy* to paint social service efforts as well-meaning even if they are just wasteful boondoggles.

And it is *easy* to see you as knuckle-dragging troglodytes when Democrats paint a picture of tearful young women who, having suffered the pain of rape, now suffer hard time in prison for not carrying the rapists baby. Are you out of your freaking minds??

Your fixation on the marriage issue is also just downright creepy. Seriously, a huge portion of the population either just doesn’t think about gay people very much or, having gay friends, thinks that they are pretty much like everyone else. Freedom-loving America just doesn’t get it when you go all “Biblical End Times” because Gay people want a ceremony. And yes, this is true even if, when asked, most people would tend to agree that marriage is between a man and a woman. They just don’t care and you scare them because of how much you do.

The bottom line is that America wasn’t founded to be a Christian nation even if Christianity lay behind many of its underlying principles. America was founded to be a free nation. And this simple fact explains why grim-faced, bible-thumping authoritarians scare so many people into the arms of Democrats even when they are otherwise incompetent.

Whomever you find creepy, isnt the point. I find Marxists and Hedonists creepy. Creepy people have a right to participate in informing legislation (even creepy Christians who make up the majority of the population), and freely expressing their interests and needs and viewpoints in the institutions, especially because they are the majority.

The US was founded as a Confederation of Christian States, and is based upon Judeo Christian (especially Protestant Christian) foundations.

@Trangbang – As long as outlawing abortion in all cases remains part of the Republican platform, that is *exactly* how the MSM will portray the future should the GOP take control. Do you really think that, because you’d parse things in a way more favorable to your viewpoint, that others will look at things the same way? Look at how Claude Akin and Richard Mourdock were painted – both came close enough to the inevitable conclusion that rape victims *would* be frog-marched to jail that the GOP had months of MSM commentary to that effect. And it cost them two Senate seats and, very likely, the presidency.

Wrong, wrong and more wrong!!!! First, abortion should never have been put into the “social issues” column. The only thing that I might be able to agree with this author on is that the argument against abortion should be better made AND pro-lifers must come to terms that they will probably never win a complete ban on abortion. Second, gay marriage does not belong outside the political realm but does belong at the state level. The federal government has no place banning gay marriage nor forcing states, that happen to be against it, into honoring it. Don’t know much ’bout the guy who wrote this drivel but he would be better served over at HuffPo.

Problem I foresee (and if someone in the 195 comments has already brought this up, I apologize for repeating it):

The state allows a same-sex couple to be married. That couple happen to be members of a church which doesn’t acknowledge same-sex marriage.

And yes, I realize that it’s not very likely that a same-sex couple would be involved (at least not permanently involved) with a church which sees same-sex marriage as anti-biblical, but there are going to be instances of this – you can pretty much take that to the bank.

So I don’t see a ‘separation of marriage between church and state’, as it were, being a solution to the problem.

I can’t figure out why the conservatives keep fighting these battles. Trying to use the government to force old morals on modern humans? Why is government so prominent a tool for achieving your goals? It seems antithetical to ‘small government’ philosophy. In the face of political suicide you clowns are keeping it up. WHY?

Because some of us believe that these “old morals” are still good tools to live by. I mean the 10 Commandments are old morals so does that mean we shouldn’t follow them? More specifically about murder, stealing and other umbrella commandments?

How is saying “Hey I’m perfectly content with same-sex civil unions receiving all the same benefits(tax codes, visitation rights etc.) as a married couple but I’m not willing to redefine the word to suit them.” a bad thing? Much less forcing anyone to do anything?

Those that are adamant in changing the definition are the ones using the power of the government to try and change it.

So if a Catholic woman marries a Jewish man in civil court are they married? Not according to the Church or the Rabbis. What they have is a civil marriage or union if you prefer.

So they decide to go Jewish some years later when the kids come along and they want more religion. She converts and they go through a Jewish marriage. Mazal Tov. Things don’t go so well and a few years later they get a divorce in court. Are they divorced? No they are still married according to Jewish law until they get a Jewish religious divorce (get).

We already make these distinctions but the only big contraversy concerning the law happens in the case of same sex. There are some religions who will marry them whatever the state says. Are they married? Yes according to some churches and some states. No according to others. So what is the problem here?

Bigamists and Polygamists want their civil rights, too. Would you deny these people or cling to your bigoted notions that marriage is between 2 people?

Anything goes, remember. There is no right or wrong, no absolute truth. Certainly the beast lovers should have their sexual relatioinships approved of and subsidized by the state as well, legal and material aid to their lifestyle choices.

@Escape – you make some good points but I can’t help but think that you aren’t seeing the whole picture. Throughout the discussion, you insist on the idea that you can, through force of law, establish and promote traditional mores. I really don’t believe that is true. Society is like a lumbering elephant whose path you might be able to influence but whose ultimate path cannot be dictated with precision.

It also isn’t the case that “good” societies (those following “traditional mores”) are always more successful than “corrupt” societies. There’s a loose correlation but plenty of counterexamples. Islamists would argue that the U.S. is corrupt but would you really switch places with an Afghani? The U.S. is far less tolerant of drug use and other “loose morals” than the Swiss (for example, we jail a *far* higher proportion of our citizens). Is Switzerland a hell-hole of moral relativism? Is it a failed state? No.

You worry too much, I think, about departures from a narrow view and give too little credit to the ways that open societies manage to evolve to a better future.

There is a key point here Mr. Brit. It is the difference between tolerance (which means the absence of legal proscription) and promotion (legal and material aid) of behavior. We promote behaviors that lead to success and reinforce them via law. Marriage is one such successful insitution, in which the tribe/society gets offspring that are raised in a stable home and socialized by that unit of civilization. We tolerate other sexual forms, we dont teach them in sex ed classes to children, or celebrate them, or sanction them. This way you have a somewhat tolerant but still successful society.

I suggest you look into civilizational collapses, where you will see the hedonism and decadence, the social rot, underpining the societal collapse. There is plenty of evidence for you to look at, if you truly are interested.

Because principles are principles and values are values. And principles and values that lead to success dont change.

You are a child of the 60s New Left, Hedonist Individualism. Youre version of governance and society doesnt work either.

One wonders how many German folks went with the Nazis, because hey, standing in the way of history and the times is just suicidal and foolish. Two recent examples John Roberts with his Obamacare ruling and Olympia Snowe’s votes on Obamacare where she actually said word for word she “didnt want to get in the way of history.”

Ludicrous. A vast number of contemporary moral concerns are also ancient concerns. Clearly the antiquity of a moral position is not a sufficient criterion for its enduring relevance. Murder? I mean, really. How silly can you be?

Progressive outrage and demand for changes in government policy consistently adopts the language of morality. A brief row-boating through a few HuffPo articles and their comments makes that abundantly clear.

But when among conservatives, progressives are “shocked, shocked” to discover that such troglodytes imagine that moral categories which happen to persist across human civilizations and history could possibly be deemed anything less then fascistic, because “modern” is a magic word that works as well as “new economy” did at the end of the dotcom bubble. The old rules don’t apply!

Did you even bother reading any of the dozens of articulate and thoghtful responses fron conservatives that have been posted here? “You clowns” is the kind of epithet tossed out by a bigot who is completely uninterested in wahat the other side has to say. You don’t like the message, so, natch, you attack the messenger. Your mind was already made up and your ears already stooped before tour fingers hit the keyboard. Bigot.

Here is the Cliff Notes version for you and all the other hostile bigots:

1. Starting about 100 years ago, progressives began to grow government so that it would have unprecedented power over individual American citizens, in every aspect of their lives. They succeeded. Government is now gargantuan and costs every American working in the private sector 50 percent of his or her income. The United States Congress sees it as its business to regulate what light bulbs you can buy and how many gallons of water are in your toilet tank. And yet that same United States Congress has failed to pass a budget (as required by a law passed by a previous United States Congress in 1974).

All this because, why? Toilet flushing and light bulbs in kitchens and bedrooms have been redefined by progressives not as personal behavior but as public behavior with environmental impact and therefore to be regulated.

2. Starting about seventy(ish) years ago, progressives began to trash the culture, an effort which “went viral” starting about fifty years ago. Lurid and vulgar behavior and language which had previously been engaged in privately, and that often only in select company of peers (avoidance of vulgarity in “mixed company” and children), was now brought out into public. Movies, TV, music, sporting events, restaurants, buses, post offices, public sidewalks. Progressives pushed the tide of filth and vulgarity into every venue, every corner of American public life save one … actual houses of worship. (institutional leadership of religios organizations being a different story)

3. When conservatives objected to the tide of filth and vulgarity in the culture, they were mocked and ridiculed by the progressives who commanded the heights of those same cultural organs whence came the filth and vulgarity. “If you dont like it, turn it off!” “If it’s not physically hurting you or costing you money, why should you care?”

4. When the social pathologies of this degraded culture then began to manifest themselves in ways that DID in fact cost money and lives (as predicted by conservatives), did the progressives the back off from the culture trashing? Nope. They ramped it up. And when traditional cultural and social institutions, after decades of marginalization and ridicule, proved inadequate to address the tsunami of social pathologies, guess what? Progressives raised the cry that more laws and more government were needed to address all these problems. Govt became the 800-pound gorilla in social woker’s garb.

5. Having been culturally neutered, conservatives reached for the only tool left that could address what was a national descent into social insanity … the power of government (esp FedGov).

6. Whereupon the progressives screamed like banshees: “How dare you force your morality on us!” “Separation of church and state!” “Keep your Bible out of my bedroom!”

It was a very clever trick by the progressives — the aggressors playing the aggrieved. Because this particular tragedy has taken about many generations to unfold, people who arrived at the theater late, i.e. in time to see only Acts 5 and 6, would understandably draw the conclusion that conservatives were the fascist ogres here and progs, the poor bedeviled freedom fighters. And that would be exactly the wrong conclusion. Only those who had seen the play from the start, or who had bothered to read the program, would know the truth.

Secular people don’t believe the human being is anything other than a souless animal. It’s the root of all the thinking. If there’s no higher power then morality is meaningless, perhaps only useful as a way to keep people in line. “Good” is up for sale to the highest bidder and reduced to the purely material. Sad. I’m close to checking out of sociey entirely. Let it all go to hell.
Anyway, you get first prize in my book. But nobody reads my book.

@bogie – yours is a reasoned and concise summary of the So-Con position in this exchange. I’d like to provide a respectful response that I hope you and the other SoCons would at least consider. I write in the hope that I can widen the dialog – not to call names or argue past one another or in any way to be hostile.

Your point number 1 is the one that all of us agree with. Reversing the tide of “progressive” attempts to manage peoples’ lives is the single most important challenge facing the nation.

Point number 2 is self-evident to SoCons but not nearly so much to others. Has there been an astonishing increase in the tolerance for “vulgarity”? Yes, in some quarters. But it is also true that much of what was once considered “vulgarity” – such as rock music and dancing – are simply the way that some people enjoy the culture. Now, maybe you think that the Beatles and Eric Clapton should have been imprisoned for “vulgarity” but that is not the way that the vast majority of people see it.

I am not mocking or ridiculing you, I’m simply pointing out that people have been bemoaning the “fall” of culture for millennia and *somehow* most things just keep getting better: medicine, science, technology, average personal wealth (at least until recently), quality of leisure, etc. That is: we find a way to thrive even if P Diddy makes music we don’t like.

Use me as an example. If she were alive, my grandmother would probably be shocked at the music I listen to (lots of Metal). And yet, I am a 53-year old Ph.D. running a successful business, enjoying the fruits of a close, wonderful family, and trying my best to contribute to the community through church and charity service. I simply don’t buy the idea that all of that is negated because someone, somewhere considers my music “vulgar.” It is simply “culture” – in the same way that Ragtime music or the Big Band sound once was (both of which were considered vulgar in some quarters).

But, worse for your argument is the fact that despite the obvious increase in vulgar culture, crime rates continue to fall, national wealth continues to grow and science and technology continue to give us miracles. Evangelical churches are thriving (and even adding a bit of Rock and Roll to their services) and communities of faith have sprung up throughout this extraordinary triumph of human imagination that we call the World Wide Web.

In the social and material sphere, gross racial oppression is mostly a thing of the past, our houses and cars are light-years ahead of those just a few decades old, and our communications technologies simply stagger the imagination.

While there are clearly whole communities of people caught up in the agonies of social dissolution – people that probably would very much benefit from good old-fashioned 1950s morality – it turns out that the worst of these pathologies manifest at higher rates in the “Red” states – and particularly in the Bible Belt (check divorce rates and out of wedlock births by state if you doubt me).

This leads me to your point 5: people don’t see the “national descent into insanity.” They see a mostly successful nation with pretty much the same panoply of troubles and toils that has marked all of human history. Efforts to gild the past – casting it as a golden age from which humanity has fallen – simply don’t comport with the reality of the challenges that marked those ages.

In the end, the path to civilizational failure is not marked by out-of-wedlock births – as bad as these are for those involved, it is marked by the rise of a political class that no longer sees the virtue in self-restraint. It is marked by the wholesale looting of the national wealth for the aggrandizement of that political class. It is marked by a conscious shift on the part of leaders from a path of service to a path of domination.

I sincerely believe that the bulk of the country senses that Washington is utterly broken spiritually and materially. But telling the citizenry that you’ll fix it by controlling *their* decisions regarding their own bodies just doesn’t strike anyone but SoCons as an obviously effective solution. Telling them that it is time to get out of their “beeswax” is, to me, much more likely to appeal to their sense of what will move the country forward because it addresses, head on, the sense that Washington is out of control.

You do realize that Frankfurt School Marxists cooked up this idea to undermine and subvert bourgeois(Christian middle class society/order), to destroy the traditional family unit for the purpose of paving the way to a Socialist Utopian Future, dont you?

Perhaps start with Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. Google the phrase “polymorphous perversity”. This is a direct assault on the foundation of European Christian civilization with regards to one of the pillars of it’s foundation.

You arent going to come back from that. You arent going to stave off Communism, via hedonistic libertarianism. The narcissist hedonists will merely demand that you subsidize their failed behaviors….so that they can conintue to enjoy themselves, without negative consequences of their behavior, because it isnt fair, you know, for those successful moral Christians to be so wealthy. We need to spread the wealth around and equalize outcomes. You know this is the truth of it.

thanks for trying (I guess?) – You still sound completely silly to me – yes silly like a CLOWN. You can’t expect to win elections when you believe in false premises and have a vision of moral society that you THINK once existed but actually never did. Good luck to us all.

Enough with the nonsense that gay marriage will mean your Church will have to perform gay marriage ceremonies. No, they won’t.

Divorce is obviously legal in this country, but do you see the State forcing the Catholic Church to annul marriages?

My pastor would go to jail before marrying homosexuals in our Church, and if you really want to destroy the Left, you’ll have them coming in with police officer’s forcing gay marriage. You’d have an armed mutiny on your hands.

My position on gay marriage is I don’t support it but it’s not a hill worth dying on because I can’t say with a straight face it undermines the family yet we let someone get married and divorced as many times as they want. I really don’t see how it’s any different for two gay people to live together and be able to adopt children for them to have some silly government piece of paper.

Personally, i’d like the government out of the marriage business altogether, make it a private, religious ceremony.

Gay activists will push the issue. Christian couples in England have been denied the chance to adopt explicitly because of their beliefs on homosexuality.

Religiously affiliated adoption services, churches, and businesses will be challenged by the gay movement. We should have some protection because of the first amendment and our American heritage of religious freedom, but I’ll wait until the Obamacare mandate is decided before I put any stock into the protection offered by the courts.

What we need is not a ‘conservative’ viewpoint but a federalist one that is held dearly by conservatives as that is what the Nation is founded upon. It is the most basic part of our society to remove higher layers of government from more local decisions and to exclude those higher layers when they have no pertinent say in local issues.

Republicanism divides power of government into different parts with different formulations.

Federalism divides powers of a Nation into different spheres and puts strict distinction and limits on those spheres and retains the greatest power to the individuals that make up the Nation.

The reason that conservatives support marriage is that it is not just the basis for the family but it is the first defining unit of the Nation. This has been known in the Common Law of England since at least the 14th century and is part of the US legal history that derives from that exact, same basis. It has deep legal standing and meaning to all members of society who fall under such Common Law and we change it at our peril as our understanding of Nation is bound inextricably up with it. The sustaining function of having children within a marriage framework is a strong one and calling other things ‘marriage’ to get mere privileges given to those who are married is devaluing the concept of marriage itself… and of the Nation of which it is a basis.

I do not mind if privileges are extended under legal framework to couples who are not able by biology to have naturally born children to them. That isn’t marriage, however, that is a couple with deep emotional attachment to each other getting privileges extended by government to them. That is a contractual agreement framework that is not marriage due to the biological concerns and lack of naturally born children. That is a distinction with a large difference and is conservative not only socially but fiscally as well as it then puts ‘marriage’ back into its role of being sanctified by a religious institution which gets to the end goal of having a satisfied sets of couples who are treated the same for taxation privileges. Marriage is then left up purely to social institutions. The government gives privileges via the tax code to certain living arrangements. These two become disconnected and gets the State out of defining marriage and puts that into the most local of all authorities: individuals and their religious institutions.

You don’t get that by arguing on a conservative basis unless it is done via a federalist underpinning and statement that the best government is the most local and that which we should seek to perfect is within ourselves, not at the gross level of the State. The best we can hope for from these organs of society we call ‘government’ is EQUAL treatment, not FAIR as ‘fair’ is in the eye of the beholder. Equal can be defined to apply to all… fairness is not applying the same to all. These are things federalism teach us and they can and should be espoused as part of federalist understanding as the basis for modern US conservatism in big, bold letters and stated again and again until the point is driven home.

Sorry AJackson, the Marxist Left isnt going to play by your rules with regards to Federalism. The only question left is what are you going to do about it. Fight the battles as they exist or pine for some ideal past where the Marxists and Centralized Government Statists havent broken the system. Cant fight back because hey that would violate the principle of Federalism. So just let em run riot over you and yours.

If they are claiming the high ground, then how come I can only see them by looking down into a depression?

I’m more than willing to let them burn through their class warfare concept, that sort of hell can be purifying. If you do not raise the standard to repair to and continue to point to it, then you doom all around you to death and destruction. Do you dare to point to a standard while it is unpopular? Will you do so if it gets you killed? It is those people who can do those things that rebuild after the destruction has run its course… give in and you give up and you doom mankind to this stuff forevermore.

You are free to do so.

Just as I am free not to.

I can be a pessimist and not be a defeatist. There is both a difference and a distinction.

Hmm. Slavery was clearly as much a “social” issue as abortion. Clearly something abolitionists should’ve left to moral suasion over coffee. Eh?

Abortion is as much a civil rights issue as gay marriage might be to you. Let’s put it this way — if an abortion right can be found only be appealing to freaking Constitutional penumbrae, then I have no doubt a right to life for the unborn may be found by appealing as dubiously to such emanations. Abortion is a civil rights issue no matter how you look at it — albeit for the unborn it’s as inchoate as such in social consciousness and law, as is the life at issue.

Meanwhile, the feminism that asserted the world needed women everywhere because men were beasts whose rule needed womynly amelioration, has matured into a movement that has cast unborn human life as parasites and pitted the whim of women against the lives of their unborn children. Not progress.

As for polygamy, well, yeah. If gender itself is now deemed arbitrary, what the hell is not arbitrary about the number 2? When gender was NOT considered arbitrary, “2″ made non-arbitrary sense because you need at least 1 male and 1 female to raise a family. The idea that there should be no more was a construct, to be sure, but one that could be argued and defended on certain grounds not un-related to the grounds upon which one might defend the non-arbitrariness of differentiated gender as a determinant of marital eligibility.

But once you remove the latter, the former is indefensible on the old grounds and it begins to look as if those who defend the now nakedly arbitrary number “2″ as sacrosanct are far more bigoted than putative homophobes, who actually had some argument to make.

In short, anyone who embraces gay marriage but denies polygamy — including marriages of convenience among college students who share no amorous interest whatsoever, but merely wish to incur whatever advantages they appreciate in law — is irrational and a worse bigot than those who advocate for heterosexual-only marriage. Why this is not more obvious has long amazed me.

Among other issues, the sentimental chestnut that we shouldn’t deny to gays the right to express their love “like anyone else” does not suffer from going too far, it suffers from (a) going too sideways and then (b) not going far enough. Because if “love” is some reason for permitting marriage, then I want to know who defines “love.” The state? LOL Why should sexual attraction be at issue at all? Why NOT mere economic convenience? And if that’s fine — then why not for more than two people?

“But legal precedent has established, in our institutions, few ways to implement arrangements that accommodate multiple…” Well if it comes to that, social precedent has established, in our institutions, few ways to respect same-gender…” It seems to me that law is precisely the first place we need to respect these things. Figure out how to accommodate polygamy in law before you figure out a way to twist fundamentalists’ arms into championing gay marriage in their social networks.

Why did slavery end in Britain? Because of the determined political action of William Wilburforce and other social conservatives. Who led the abolitionist movement in America? The churches of New England and Christian ministers such as Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Finney and others.

This article is wrong-headed. What case did the GOP make regarding social issues during this last campaign? The answer is none. It’s partly why they lost, because social conservatives were not motivated. The last time a Republican candidate put social issues in the forefront was in 2004, when W was reelected, leaving the Dems and lefty pundits wringing their hands about those “values voters.” We’ve lost that in the last two cycles because neither McCain nor Romney is ideological. The libertarian push within the GOP (and especially the Tea Party) has had one big downside: the marginalization of social conservatives. This trend, if continued, will move the party towards extinction. “Leave me alone” is not a compelling political philosophy, especially within the party of Lincoln, who did not buy the libertarian position on slavery. Reagan’s three-legged stool – economic renewal based on lower tax rates and less regulation; a muscular foreign policy supported by a strengthened military; and traditional Judeo-Christian positions on moral and social issues – was, and should be, the model. One of the legs is being sawn off the stool, and the result is predictable. Lose the socons, lose any chance of survival as a party. And the GOP will lose the socons, because they are absolutely ideological, and are not big fans of the lesser-of-two-evils kind of choice. I do agree that abortion is more pressing than the oxymoronic same-sex “marriage.” But you won’t get socons to agree to the latter, either, because homosexuality is proscribed by the Book they live by (by which the majority of the Founders lived also). As to the extra-political approach: we do. We pray and protest and support crisis pregnancy centers and homes for pregnant girls, and so forth. But abortion on demand was thrust upon us by government, and we can’t ignore that fact. Of all the post-election analyses, the notion that it was lost due to our espousing social positions is the biggest canard of all. The Dems went wall-to-wall abortion at their convention, and there was no response from the other side. The Gop lost the social argument by default. I just hope that the younger rising stars of the party – Rubio, Jindal, Ayotte among others – will not be persuaded by the sclerotic party “brain trust” to bury their genuine socon sentiments.

There is nothing original in this piece and a lot that is wrong with it.

“[O]n gay marriage, it’s the fourth quarter, the score is about 80-0 and you’re on the your own five yard line with two minutes to go.”

Are you joking? This past election was the first time homosexual marriage could be described as enjoying anything like a serious victory at the ballot box. “Same-sex marriage has been a prominent issue on ballot propositions for almost a decade. Despite what appears to be some movement in public opinion in favor of gay marriage and a growing number of states that permit gay marriage, all state-level victories for same-sex marriage have come from courts or legislatures; voters have consistently voted to restrict marriage to one man and one woman when given the choice, with 30 of 31 measures banning gay marriage having passed to date.” (Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California)

Also, does your libertarian acceptance of the “mind your own beeswax” philosophy extend to incest between consenting adult partners (let’s assume they are unable to bear children to avoid the usual dodge)? If not, why not? What about polygamy? What about sex with a minor? After all, who is more likely to feel like they are in love than a 13-year-old girl? Who are you to decide for her that her love isn’t “the right kind”? Each of these three sexual choices (incest, polygamy, sex with children) have a longer and more widely accepted pedigree than homosexuality. Are you suggesting that conservatives say, “Go for it, America! We’re just gonna be over here minding our own beeswax!”…? If not, why does homosexuality get a pass?

Hollywood has managed to convince people that homosexuals make up about 20% of the population (it’s about 4%), that they are born that way (there is no compelling evidence for this), and that they are an oppressed minority (they tend to do a little better than average financially). Based on these false impressions, and for pragmatic political purposes that will actually serve to *harm* the GOP, you would have people leave the government imposition of social issues to the left. Or are you assuming THEY will also agree to leave the social issues alone?

I agree that we need to fight for conservative social issues outside of the political arena, but we also have to fight for them inside that arena. Both determine what kind of a society we’ll live in.

I get your general direction and largely agree with it. Personally I think morality is a personal choice and it is a waste of time to try to enforce them. Just because I disagree with a behavior doesn’t mean it should be illegal.

However I disagree that the Right should take social issues off the table because:

1) The Left will manufacture outrage over perceived social con issues to charge up their base whether the Right brings them up or not. Example: the recent claims that Republicans were out to outlaw birth control. Nobody was suggesting that and everyone was quite confused when a question was asked about it during the Republican primary debates. So avoiding pressing on social issues will not prevent the Left from accusing the Right of pushing them.

2) Regarding gay marriage – even you want to specify that marriage should be restricted to two people. What about the rights of polygamists? Plus, the Right might be more receptive to the gay marriage argument if the Left didn’t immediately start using the courts to ruin private businesses who chose to not support gay marriages (example: florists, caterers). Nobody serious doesn’t expect the Left to eventually try to use the courts to coerce religions to legitimize gay marriage. Silly? Ask the preacher in Canada who was banned for life from preaching against homosexuality. Can’t happen in America? Ask the guy who made the film about Mohamed that was blamed for starting the Benghazi “riot.”

My point is: The social issues, whatever your position, are best dealt with outside the governmental realm.

My point for the duration. It was that way for much of my lifetime.

A politician’s view on gay marriage doesn’t even belong in the sphere of federal government at all.

When a (presumably young)person wrote here, gee, how do we solve the thorny pro- life versus pro-abortion conundrum, I thought, gee, that wasn’t even a definable conundrum when I was growing up.

When Barack Hussein Obama pandered to a certain segment of women and made the cringe-worthy remark that he wouldn’t want his young daughters “punished with a baby”, I can’t describe the contempt I felt.

This is a great part of the explanation for why the Republican/conservative side lost in the election… Republicans were given the nanny state prize for our private lives. We are the busybodies.

You’re right tanstaafl, every intelligent woman I know was also turned off by Sandra Fluke’s demand for free birth control from her health insurance. THAT was not the issue that drove women to Obama.
It was the issue of Republicans saying they want to overturn Roe vs Wade and make sure that NO women can obtain a legal abortion. THIS IS A BIG DEAL TO WOMEN!
Simon is 100% right in writing that the GOP MUST drop their religious social issues!

It was the issue of Republicans saying they want to overturn Roe vs Wade and make sure that NO women can obtain a legal abortion.

I didn’t hear “republicans” say that, although some republicans may want that.

At the very least,it wasn’t part of the official republican platform at the convention in any manner, shape or form.

As for roe v. wade (a privacy decision, not an abortion decision per se), I’ve always found it funny that big strong liberated American women need to look to some wimpy SCOTUS decision in order to have “control” over their own bodies.

The first thing that women did after getting the vote and then some measure of economic independence via WW2 and post WW2, was move to abuse another groups rights for their own economic and social interests, this group is the most vulnerable minority on the planet, the unborn. This will be to their everlasting shame. People 100 years from now will look back in horror, just like we do at slavers and slavery. We had to fight a brutal war to end slavery, we are probably headed for another over abortion.

Women have full control over their bodies. If one wishes to avoid pregnancy, it doesnt cost a dime and it isnt difficult to do, just keep your legs shut. What women wish to do is avoid the responsibilities of being an adult, namely accepting the results of your own behavior. They arent alone in this, but it is what it is. Then they demand to be treated as adults, of course, even as they shirk adult responsibility.

Universal enfranchisement has been a disaster and we are going to crash and burn because of it.

The curse of the low information voter. Mitt Romney repeatedly made it clear that “banning contraception” was not on the list of things he intended to deal with as president because 1) He wanted to focus on the economy and jobs and 2) the actual issue was who pays, not any “ban”. He should have gone “full Gingrich” and heaped ridicule on any journalist that asked irrelevant questions, but Mitt was too polite. I had doubts that Mitt Romney would resist making a bad compromise on the budget, but I never had concern that he would stray into the social issues. Not sure if he sincerely believes in federalism or whether federalism was a convenient way for Mitt Romney to avoid specific action on abortion, but anyone paying attention would have known that Mitt intended to kick this fight down to the state and local level.

The one thing that Mitt Romney could have done to affect abortion law was to nominate judges. The high ground position on judges is simple: Nominate judges who will follow the law as written and not legislate from the bench. That should be a good common sense position that all Republicans can agree on. Social conservatives are generally not trying to impose their moral position on left-leaning city dwellers. Instead, social conservative pass local laws and then left-leaning judges prevent those local laws from being enforced.

Numbers of abortions exploded in the years following passage of Roe v. Wade. That Supreme Court decision made “ok” what had been shady and backdoor. It also made it possible for abortion to literally turn into a means of birth control for some women. (I met more than a few in the 1980′s for whom that was true)

Since 1973, we have officially aborted in excess of 1/6 of the total American population.

The continued alienation of women — the largest voting bloc in our country — in the last election from the Republican Party has dangerous, even perilous, implications. It’s time to consider doing an end-around.

The women I know around here who voted to re-select Obama (one of them filling her Facebook page with abject lies about Romney) are worthy of alienation.

Diehard social cons are a big turnoff for me, but not as big a turnoff as my pro Obama acquaintances.

Roger, Isn’t hindsight wonderful? Of course if you can create that meme that social conservatives who hardly had a voice in the election were why Romney lost than your sterling pre-election analysis is correct.
The poster above actually stated he didn’t vote for Romney because of Terry Schiavo. Those Romney ads promoting keeping her alive were just devastating. I bet there were probably key voters in swing states who voted for Obama because of Hoover and the Bonus Army or Rutherford B. Hayes being a big government Republican.
The vibe I’m getting is that Christians are not wanted in the party.
I say “fine”. We can take a pietist position and withdraw from the political wars and the Republican party can contend for being the amoral party light.
Good luck with that.

One element is many so-con concerns would be addressed quite nicely by a far smaller government, particularly the elements of family law and school content issues that tend to cause trouble. If government doesn’t run schools, there’s no curriculum issues – so-cons can send their kids to religious schools and others can attend secular schools. And if you’re worried about what other people’s kids are learning, you’re the busybody, whether you’re religious or secular.

As for family law, most of it should be done using civil mediators, charities, etc. A far smaller social welfare bureaucracy would accomplish much of this.

I’ve always thought that so-cons and libertarians would easily make common cause if so-cons realize that using government power to advance their goals simply won’t work, for the simple reason that so-cons won’t run the government long enough to make it work. So, the best thing is to break the government policy monopoly and let so-con institutions develop and advance their ideas in a small-government world.

Roger I’m in general agreement about the point your trying to make. Except Big O won not because the GOP was opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage but higher turnout among his core groups (Latinos Afro-Americans Single Women) that gave him a narrower but clear victory. But other than that you’re on mark of things particularly on what social conservatives should do with same-sex marriage which you stand opposite of them on. I personally with them on that issue but also think it should be at least handled at the state level where it can be taken care much more effectively. Maybe even just take it out of government all together and just let churches handle it. If a gay/lesbian couple would wanna get married but a church refused to just go to another church that will. Also again in agreement about abortion life begins at conception and should be protected morally and legally.

Roger makes a point about uniting the two movements that offer hope for an end to Statism in our land. If Social Conservatives will abandon their quest to have government impose the SC values, no matter how noble or worthy, we might be able to unite the enthusiasm of the Tea Party with the structure of the Libertarians. Certainly something more acceptable to both than any alliance with the remaining skeleton of the GOP.

So you will be fine with the So-Cons if they just shut up and support libertarianism.

The So-Cons will tell you to shut up and support them. Do you find that argument persuasive?

If not, do you think that the So-Cons will find your argument persuasive?

The So-Cons are opposed to the Marxist-Statists in totality. Whilst you libertarians agree with the Cultural Marxist assault on traditional morality and religion, the smashing of the bourgeouis social norms. Ill pass.

The problem I have as a fiscal conservative/social moderate is that both social conservatives and “marxist-stateists” want the national government to be dictating people’s lives. They both disagree about the nature of the dictates they want, but they both want the national government pushing one uniform national morality on everyone. The Catholic Chuch clinging to their “Democratic roots” no matter how much they are victimised by their association shows this problem in stark detail. Both Liberals and Social Conservatives think it is the federal government’s job to tell people how to live their lives.

While it is true as a social conservative you may have a social agenda defined by your religion, you fail to see that enforcing religious moral behavior is the job of the church and community, and should not be the job of the national government. If you want people to live by religious values, then welcome them into your church and teach them these values. Forcing them upon the people against their will using the power of the National government makes your methods as reprehensible as the statists with whom you disagree.

If you believe your religion needs to control government, then your religion is just as oppressive as the Marxists you dispise. As a fiscal conservative I am much more concerned with the social concervatives who show a marked lack of fiscal concern about the future of our nation than I am with the marxist who at least understands that they want to deliberately destroy our country to create their communist “paradise”. You would hasten their success in order to hold on to the power to dictate your morals to everyone else. If this is your concern, then you don’t want religious freedom for everyone, you want everyone to abide by the rules of your chosen religion.

Standing by your principles is fine. I am also standing by my principles as well. When this happens and both of us do not prioritize what is most important in survival of this nation at this point in time the same way, then we both together end up handing the marxist/statists you despise the win they desire. I disagree with them because they want to dictate other people’s personal behavior. Why should I agree with you when you want to do the same?

For forty years Row V. Wade has not once been realistically challenged by the Republican Party. They sell you time and again that they are against it, and if you’ll just give them another majority they will slay that beast for you. People have been having the Republican Party “Lucy” time and again pull the “abolish abortion” football out of your way. The reason being that if you actually get a field goal on that issue, then they’ve lost the hook that keeps you comming back to vote for their team.

As a social moderate I will fight tooth and nail to keep the federal government from dictating the practice of your religion to you. I will fight them trying to bill you for services (like birth control and abortions) your religion may find abhorent, I will fight them to keep them from suing you to perform services (like homosexual marriage cerimonies) for people who violate your religious dictates. I will also fight to keep the federal government out of your business. Can you not also give me the same courtesy? Can’t you also vote to keep the government out of my pocket, my home, and my personal life as well.

If that is too much to ask, if you really are just concerned only about your religion being dominant, and have no care for the United States of America as your nation, then yes it is time for us to part ways. I want a United States of America which gives you the greatest freedom possible without impinging upon other people’s freedoms. If that doesn’t sound like enough for you, then how are you any different from the rest of the fascist liberals who also want more control over how people live and think.

The problem I have as a fiscal conservative/social moderate is that both social conservatives and “marxist-stateists” want the national government to be dictating people’s lives. — Kelly Martin

This is just false. The Social Cons Christians are responding to the assault from the Left, and the Left imposing their morality on others. Roe v Wade being a prime example. But also the dictates from the Federal Courts with regards to Christian expression in the public institution via a radical interpretation of the Establishment Clause.

As I tried to explain to someone else, the Marxist-Statists are the aggressors and the Classically Liberal Christians are the reactionaries. Just as the US is not equally at fault for the Cold War and did many things that werent exemplary of their highest principles in the effort to combat Soviet Communist Imperialism, so too the Christian Right has been drawn to the national stage and indeed politics in general, because the Left is pushing their morals and values via Government Edict.

The So Con Classically Liberal Christians are small government Federalists who wish to mind their own business at the local level, but unfortunately they cant, because their rights are being infringed upon by the Marxist Statists.

This is where the core of the Christian Right is, the mainstream Christian Right. Youll notice that they came onto the political scene after Roe v Wade especially, as a reaction to the Leftwing Activist Courts edict to the States and Localities, bypassing the State Legislatures.

Can’t you also vote to keep the government out of my pocket, my home, and my personal life as well. — Kelly Martin

That is exactly what I vote for. And if you cant see that, then mores the fool you.

I certainly am extremely critical of the Republican Party on the Abortion issue, however the Supreme Court is key, and on that score, we finally are getting somewhere. It’s a shame that we wont be able to replace Ginsberg with another solid Originalist Conservative and solidify the court.

PS – Whatever I or you may wish, the plain fact of the matter is that Christianity is the dominant religion of the majority and the heritage and tradition of the USA. I doubt you can appreciate that to any significant degree, when you should be thanking your lucky stars or whatever it is that you do…that this is so.

Roger is still under the leftist umbrella whether he recognizes it or not…perhaps one day, Roger will realize that coming half way to truth is still living a lie.

Just as abortion on demand cheapened life and it now shows in so many capacities like metal detectors in schools and millions of amoral and incorrigible kids, the destruction of marriage is the core element of why this country is going down the toilet. I didn’t need science and a sonogram to confirm for me, “Yeah, it’s a baby.”

Listen up, Roger and wake up. If marriage were still sacrosanct instead of a joke, if it were looked at as a holy union instead of a matter of living convenience and pleasure, a man of Barack Obama’s ilk would have never even been mentioned for President. If you didn’t happen to notice, ordinary American family units with dad, mom and a couple of kids raised in a loving and secure home voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney. Many if not most were those “so cons” you rag on.

All of these problems you see manifested today, from fiscal irresponsibility, to failing public schools, to poverty, to entitlement, to dependency can be traced back to dysfunctional family unit(s). The fact you’re apparently blind to that doesn’t change the fact it is.

So you go on Roger living out there with your Hollywood jetset and making it convenient for yourself to be acceptable to those you really admire, and us “so cons” will keep on believe in the Word and bearing with your smugness about how “we ought to think.”

Screw it. I’m tired of fighting with your ilk. I will protect my family and my kids best I can and leave the rest to God – the God you don’t believe exists, which is really is the basic difference between you and me. But please remember the irony of how you call yourself Jewish, yet it’s me the fuddy duddy, the unenlightened, the bore, the Christian who happens to be on the same page of those patriarchs that founded Judaism. Maybe you ought to find a different creed or nationality or “race” to call yourself.

Even the prophets must have thrown up their hands in disgust at some point. I’m there. Let the world go to hell and it will, just as sure as the sun rising tomorrow. The signs are everywhere. Let it happen quickly…

Roger is putting forward a rational proposition as to how republicans/conservatives can win the next election and prevent the total destruction of constitutional government. Because Roger doesn’t insist upon giving your beliefs the force of law, and doesn’t worship your God you denigrate and insult him. The original settlers came here to escape religious persecution yet within a few years they were excommunicating and banishing one another (for example Thomas Hooker fled Massachusetts puritans to found Connecticut). Our constitution and system of government were written by men who had all too much experience with religious wars and intolerance. Separation of church and state necessitates compromise. The state cannot force you to join any particular church or practice any particular faith. Conversely your creed or faith cannot force others to profess to your faith or to practice your faith. That is the bargain of the constitution. I am truly surprised to find a number of posters who are willing to junk the constitution and walk away from representative government because theirs is not the state religion. Roger doesn’t insist that his religions teaching must have the force of state law, perhaps because Judaism is not a proselytizing religion . It tells Jews how to behave but non-Jews are neither required or expected to follow Halakah (Jewish Law).

Oh please. Spare me the sanctimony. I know our history, and this has nothing to do with separation of church and state…a three paragraph letter by the way which coined your precious separation for protection of the church – not the state. You’ve got it ass backwards.

It tells Jews how to behave but non-Jews are neither required or expected to follow Halakah (Jewish Law).

But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Mr. Burns, for you and the rest of people that seem to have an incredibly negative opinion social conservatives, a buzz word for Christians. I have zero clout here, but I have some do have some semblance of respect in the church community of my hometown.

So here is what I am going to work strenuously toward for the next 24 months, then especially the next 48 months. I’m out. The election is all yours. And I am going to attempt to take as many Christians with me to win you an election, Mr. Burns. I’m going to do my best to convince as many Christians I can to sit on their ass in the next election and let you “legion” of fiscally conservative, socially liberal types just sure you’re where it is at to win the big one since you’re absolutely convinced we are the problem.

And we’ll see if I can’t turn some of these overwhelmingly red states blue so that you in turn can turn California, Illinois, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York red. Good luck. I won’t hold my breath for the apology to follow when you find gay marriage and aborting them all didn’t win you an election and you lose massively this time, including most of the state senates. Then you’ll find liberals can really jerk your chains.

How’s that grab you? Because I’ve had a gut full of this bogus baloney about who cost who the election, and I am going to do my damnedest to help prove it to you. Hopefully, millions will follow my good advice to let you “have it.”

Every two years, voters having brand new demographics get to decide who is to represent Americans: working adults retire, elderly adults expire, and another cohort of 18-and-19-year-olds register to vote for the first time (I have left out the problem of new immigrants). All of this means that we gain nothing by references to prior election cycles. Much has changed since Ronald Reagan was elected. And whatever the electorate morphs into, both parties must scramble to understand it before they try to win the vote.

But here is an even bigger factor: we are headed for a world recession. Nobody can prevent it.

What next, a third world war? Consider who is our commander-in-chief. Could we lose this one? Every nation would lose. Any future political plan should weigh these possibilities.

Also if social conservatives are to win future battles on same-sex marriage, they should start by doing a better job on educating the voters and public about the potential consequences that come with it. Make the left choke on their words and strategy. The pro-same-sex marriage forces actually had a pretty good strategy which resulted in 4 first ever ballot victories where voters legalized marriage in ME, MD, WA and turned down a constitutional amendment in MN. As opposed campaigning for it as a right they reached voters on asking “permission” to change their mind and focus on committed relationships. Social conservatives should approach the issue on the basis of hetero marriages typically endure with more success and more effective in raising children. That’s not to say there are no effective same-sex parents there’s a lot of them out there. But hetero-sex parents have a more positive impact on the children they raise. That’s according to hard fact statistics I’ve seen in the past which can hold a very persuasive argument in the marriage battle.

Yawn. Another “socons need to just stfu and vote the way WE want them to vote and stop being obsessed with silly things like Life and Eternity. Don’t they realize there are more important things out there, like SEX and MONEY?!!11!!”

Or else what? You’ll blame us for not holding our noses in for yet another lame GOP moderate, in sufficient quantities to overcome Democrat cheating?

Again, social conservatives think that both atheist communism and atheist hedonism are good ways to ruin a country, have been ruining the country. I really don’t care if two roommates are having sex with each other; one-man one-woman marriage has been the best kind of household for producing good new citizens for centuries now. That’s all the government needs concern itself with, not social engineering. I don’t see any reason why same-sex marriage in Maryland will have a good effect on society when all the other attempts have been such a huge freakin’ disaster (Netherlands, Massachusetts).

Amen sister, the aggressors in the fight are not Christians. We’re at the barricades trying to hold back the assault of the moral nihilists. Roger and his neo-con and libertarian ilk here confuse liberty with license. They some how think that me-tooism is the prescription for electoral victory. Just let us keep our stuff and you can do whatever you want. They fail to realize that class envy, legalized theft and corruption, the gutting of the military are moral not fiscal problems.
Russell Kirk, a father of the modern conservative movement, said

“A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society.”

C.S. Lewis in the “Abolition of Man” said

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

A amoral society is heading rapidly towards Hell. Without promoting our Judeo-Christian heritage, it’s Democrat rapid plunge into death or GOP slow ascent into the abyss. America will still be dead and the moral capital produced by our ancestors will be spent.

One other thing. About a month ago I falsely assumed we MAY be able to slow our statist SS Titanic down by voting for the R. Now that O is back in it’s quite obvious that the only thing gonna make this government smaller is total collapse/civil war/doomsday scenario type stuff.

If you think these bastards are going to relinquish their power at the ballot box or through peaceful means you’re deluded.

Can’t win by giving in, the left just moves the goalposts. Give in on abortion, agree to pay for free abortions for all, the next cause will be euthanasia and infanticide. Give in on SSM, the next cause will be incestuous and group marriages, bestiality, lowering of age of consent, etc. The left will in time want kids taught in school that there is no God, that the Bible is hate literature, that churches are hate groups. It’s not enough to accept every evil as good, anything good has to be condemned.

Social conservatism is, at its heart, a recognition that actions have consequences, and they’re society-wide when it comes to social issues. The interesting part of the social liberal arguments is NOT that they want to be able to do what they want, but that they want to do as they please, WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES. Arguments for abortion, gay marriage, legalization of drugs, etc. all hinge on an “individual liberty” that avoids consequences to the individual, without any acknowledgement that those liberties may come at a cost to society at large.

Pro-abortionists, for example, are all about the woman’s rights, totally ignoring the rights of the baby. Gay-marriage proponents refuse to admit that marriage provide several very important functions to society, and I have yet to have ANY conversation on the subject where someone can tell me the advantages gay marriage provides society that makes it worth changing an institution that has remained the same (i.e., between men and women) in literally every human society in recorded history prior to the last 20 years. Drug legalization advocates I’ve talked to have literally walked away before admitting that there’s a social cost (in terms of crime, accident rates, and emotional damages to family and friends) to drugs.

And the most ironic part of the conversation is when social liberals complain about social conservatives attempting to “legislate morality.” The stone-cold fact is that ALL laws are an attempt to do so, whether that be by promoting behavior through the tax code or discouraging behavior through the criminal code. At some point, society has to gather together and determine what is or is not acceptable behavior; sometimes that’s done through the legislative process, and sometimes that’s done through social consensus. But since we’ve eliminated the concept of shame and embarrassment in America (“You have no right to judge me!”), there’s no alternative to the legislative process.

Any action that truly has “consequences”, as you say, does not require any type of legislation to impose those consequences. In fact, the usurpation of the natural course of activities by legislation has lessened the natural consequences of poor choices. The consequences of lying or uncivil language once was a slap across the face or a punch in the mouth and being shunned, but one will be charged with assault now and liars are our ruling elites. The consequences of drunkenness or drug-induced stupor were, in the past, an inability to earn ones keep. But now, through legislation, they are assured food and housing either in or out of prison. What you are proposing is legislation to counteract corrupt legislation. It won’t work, it only makes the situation worse. The only good response is to rid ourselves of the corrupt legislation and put us all back on our own two feet to stand or fall of our own doing. Only then will our actions result in the natural consequences, good or bad.

The Democrats only care about the so-called “social issues” to the extent that they can exploit it politically. If they can bring forward something to distract conservatives from what they actually care about, it serves their purpose. They are buying up our country using our money and much of the money from our future. They will say anything, they will support any cause that serves their central goal. But, they really are only doing one thing. They are hiring as many people as possible and extending benefits to as many as possible in order to gain their votes. That’s it! So, while Republicans/Conservatives fuss about various “important” issues, the Democrats follow a singular line of activity and our division over what is important makes it easy for them. Any activity that adds to the size and scope of government, also assists the Democrats. If Republicans would actually pursue the principles outlined in our founding documents, they could take back the government and deund all of the utterly corrupt organizations that are picking our pockets. If Republicans really applied the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility, no taxpaying citizen would have their money funding abortions or any of the other corrupt behaviors that have become a part of our government. After a single decade of laissez faire economics and a return to individual sovereignty, abortions would become as infrequent as Democrats telling the truth.

Roger, You’ve fallen for Cass Sunstein’s “let’s privatize marriage” argument. There is absolutely nothing “libertarian” about it. The California legislation on third party parenting is just the tip of a very deep iceberg of government dictatorship over personal relationships. Understand this: It is only through traditional marriage that biological parents have a presumed and default right and responsibility to raise their own child. The right to raise your own child cannot be sustained with legalized genderless marriage. We will soon get what a recent NYT editorial recommends — the licensing of all “caregiving units.” Those who don’t believe that the traditional family is the primary buffer zone between the individual and the state have not thought this through. But real debate on SSM has been non-existent. The PC smears and the desire for political expediency have encouraged a cascade of silence among those who disagree, while allowing only noise to get through. There are very sound secular reasons to oppose ssm. It’s unsettling that conservatives are not connecting the dots on this.

Mr. Simon,
The tenor of many comments here (someone correct me if I’m wrong) is that conservatism, without the “social” qualifier, is simply a reaction against the changes wrought by liberalism/progressivism.

That was the view of a certain Nobel laureate. In his book, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), F. A. Hayek included an essay titled, “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” His core reason was given in this passage:

Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change…It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments…

Social conservatives are correct that the institution of marriage is in trouble. They are mistaken in focusing on same-sex marriage. Straight people are perfectly capable of destroying the institution of marriage on their own. Focus the energy on the private side and you’ll do a lot more good.

This article poses a classic false dichotomy: Choose good government but eschew social issues. Consider now that the founding fathers stipulated that our traditional form of government — a republic — was suitable ONLY for a MORAL people. Inasmuch as the author of this piece would jettison any pretense of hewing to a moral code, and would cede to the opposition whatever moral (read amoral) code it wishes to pursue, one can argue that how we approach the act or art of governance is immaterial: Our people, being no longer moral, are ipso facto incapable of choosing good government.

What these people aren’t trying to do is to push a specific agenda of this or that behavior…

…we are fighting against the agenda of Ba’al: what these people truly want is absolute power. Not just the power to determine what we do but what we even believe is right and just.

These people aim to force us to think that such deviant behaviors shouldn’t be just tolerated but celebrated as ‘the right thing to do’. They do not want liberty… they want to control the free exercise of conscience.

I agree with the following about many Democrats/liberals “They do not want liberty… they want to control the free exercise of conscience.”

The problem is this statement also represents many social conservatives. They also want to control the free exercise of conscience through law and punishment. As a fiscal conservative I want less federal government trying to control everyone. People need to exercise their own free will, take responsibility for the consequences of their own decisions, and stop expecting federal government to legislate everyone elses morality. Work on your own morality and let other people suffer the consequences of their own bad decisions. The federal government should not be in the business of guaranting prefered outcomes for everyone.

Bravo Mr Simon B-R-A-V-O! It’s religious nanny-statism that cost the Republicans the last election and it’s what’s killed the party in many states. Romney and his proposed war on porn, the local blue-nose war on breasts, the on-going war on weed with the resulting filling of our jails, massive reduction is privacy and alienation of college age youth. The Republican war on sex in general and the if it feels good it should be illegal movement are not conservative values – they are statest values and must be rejected if the Republican Party is to survive as anything more than the Whig 2.0 party. Better than half of the TEA Party and most youth lean libertarian and that (other than accepting irrelevance) is the only possible future for the Republican Party.

This is just wrong on so many levels that I don’t know where to start. OK, go for it. You’re welcome to your hedonistic worldview. What you lack is wisdom. I hope you’ll come to a deeper, more thoughtful view of cause and effect someday. As it stands I don’t think I could stand to be in the same room with you.

I understand perfectly, some people are just uncomfortable with individual liberty and will do their best to avoid what they see as excessive freedom. I fully respect your right to live your lifestyle and your rejection of freedom for yourself. I’ll always respect and support your right to worship as you chose and and live a repressed lifestyle if that is your choice and will defend your choice against government intrusion. Where I draw the line is when you or anyone else trying to use the coercive power of government to jam your articles of faith and your repressed lifestyle down my throat at the point of a gun. That I will never accept.

“our repressed lifestyle”!!! That’s rich. I wish I could be like you and just follow the base instincts of my nature. You know what,many of us in my generation did just that and reaped the consequences in our lives. While you’re diving into the cesspool of unbridled liberty, try to stay away from underage girls and boys.

I guess if you can’t argue facts because they aren’t on your side you’ll fall back on calling anyone that supports freedom between consenting adults a child molester. I guess by that same logic if you take communion you’re a serial vampire and cannibal wannabe.

The bottom line was this nation was founded to be an experiment in “unbridled liberty” and then the Progressives mucked it up. I’ll take unbridled liberty between consenting adults over theocratic oppression any day and the bottom line is so will the majority of the country which is why the Republicans lost the election. Until the theocrats back of off and let the party become the the party of small government and individual liberty it will keep losing ground. You know what’s really funny – the theocrats would rather repeatedly lose to those openly hostile to them and seeking their destruction than embrace as allies those that just want to be left alone to enjoy their “unbridled” liberty.

Great school yard tactics – if you can’t argue with the facts just toss out a personal attack or two. For the record I’m a straight mid 50s male that neither smokes (anything) or drinks. I just value liberty. Give freedom and acceptance of those around you a try you might find that you like it.

I am the exception which must break your rule then. I am an agnotic. I have never used narcotic/illegal drugs. I am married in a hetrosexual relationship, and have one child. I work for a living. I support myself, and my family including several of my relatives living in the Philippines.

I have never murdered anyone. I have never failed to pay my taxes, I obey my local laws, and I am a loyal spouse to my wife. I enjoy the use of my freedom of association to talk with both social conservatives, and several democrats too indoctrinated to even understand that Barak Obama wants to implement socialism in the USA.

I don’t need or want you to impose your religion on me though. I have attended several churches throughout my life as a guest. I have never been a member because I do not possess faith. I do not need or want you to impose your faith upon me. I also do not want the liberals/marxists/statists to impose their beliefs upon me or you either. The best way to achieve that objective is to prevent the federal government from legislating behavior upon people. The federal government should provide for the common defense of all its citizens, regulate trade between the states to insure freedom of trade, and support the US position of Liberty and freedom to the international community.

That’s it. Everything else should as the tenth amendment lists should be reserved to the states to decide how they want to handle their communities. As long as the states do not attempt to impinge upon the rights of their citizens as listed in the Constitution (the bill of rights in particular), the federal government should stay out of it.

Unfortunately both Liberals and many Social Conservatives want the federal government power to dictate to the states beyond the mandates outlined in the US Constitution. Both want top down power and too much control in the hands of too few people.

I simply want to keep the federal government out of your lives, and your religion. In exchange I want you to keep the federal government, and your religion out of my life as well. If that is a deal breaker for you, then yes the liberals/marxists win and we both lose because you can’t accept a USA without your religion in my life.

to Kelly Martin and sholling:
Neither of you have defined my position in the slightest. You say, “many Social Conservatives want the federal government power to dictate to the states beyond the mandates outlined in the US Constitution. Both want top down power and too much control in the hands of too few people.

I simply want to keep the federal government out of your lives, and your religion. In exchange I want you to keep the federal government, and your religion out of my life as well.”
I do NOT advocate any kind of FEDERAL prohibition to any of the freedoms you desire. I think it should be left entirely to the states. But if a state votes to outlaw you name it, then by golly libertarians better accept that, at least until the next election comes around. At that point I will fight tooth and nail to have porn out of the public eye and you can fight tooth and nail to have nativity scenes out of the public eye. Deal?

I’m confused as to why as a social conservative I am under any obligation to listen to someone that doesn’t appear to have their history correct. This whole “truce on the culture war” nonsense, is pure moonshine because no one has run a campaign based on the culture war in years. Who can we point to? H.W Bush? Bob Dole? G.W Bush? John McCain? Are we now to believe, against all reason, that Mitt Romney was a culture warrior? C’mon let’s be serious, the simple fact of the matter is that there is a significant portion of this country that does not view socialism poorly and for those people social issues are unimportant. To the vast number of the Obama coalition it would seem that social issues are an add on to the fact that Obama will finally tax the rich and all that nonsense. I wish I could give an easy answer to the question “why did we lose.” But sadly, life isn’t always so cut and dried. Libertarians need to realize one important thing in conversations with conservatives: we are not impressed by the notion that true liberty is defined by being able to smoke pot when the government is ever growing, we would prefer that Obamacare not have been passed, that the regulations strangling our economy be removed and our debts taken care of. We appreciate the fact of your alliance with us but don’t make the mistake of presuming to dictate to us on how to win elections.

How’s that working out for you? Did the social conservative/fiscal moderate Republican win the presidency? How about the Senate? Did the Republicans pick up any Senate seats? Did the Republicans add seats in the House? What the Establishment talking heads refuse to come to grips with is that the vast “center” is made up of mostly of fiscally conservative social libertarians (who have no idea what a libertarian is) that just want government off their backs. They prefer freedom but backed into a corner and and forced to chose they’ll hold their noses and take a left of center government over a theocracy every time. They realize that religious Progressives (often mislabeled “social conservatives”) want to run their lives just as thoroughly and intrude on their freedoms as Obama and Pelosi and Soros want to. A liberty loving American will fight for your right to live your life and worship as you chose but will fight you tooth and nail when you move to shove your repressions down their throats at gunpoint.

Have you been hiding in a cave for the last century? Anytime you give religious repression of victimless personal choice the force of law then by definitions you are enforcing your religious repression at the point of a gun. You may make yourself feel better by wrapping yourselves in the Progressive mantra of society as the victim of “bad” individual choices but that’s as BS as Bloomberg’s war on soda and salt. Examples include Prohibition of alcohol and pot, anti-pornography laws (consenting adults), anti-sodomy laws, anti-prostitution laws, laws banning contraception (yes they existed), and laws banning sex toys that still exist. All of the above are individual choices and/or transactions between consenting (even eager) adults and yet are or were enforced at the point of a gun because religious-Progressives find them to be an afront to their faith. And let’s not forget all of the infamous “blue laws” that are still on the books in any states and communities that ban or heavily restrict alcohol sales and other types of otherwise legal business on Sunday. All activities banned solely because they violate the religious strictures of Religious-Progressives. I see no real world difference the branch of the Progressive movement that wants to control sex lives and the branch that wants to control our economic choices and enforce “sharing” at the point of a gun – both are equally hostile to individual freedom and liberty.

See above post to Kelly Martin. I don’t advocate federal prohibitions at all. The 10th amendment gives these issues to the states. I have a bumper sticker on my car to that effect. I mean it. I am not a fundamentalist, I just want to draw a line SOMEWHERE! “Nowhere” is unacceptable or we devolve into a Mad Max world. Is that really where libertarians want to take us? Please say no.

Three hundred and fifty-odd comments, many of which are trying to refute the idea that there’s any reason for them to mind their own business and stay out of everyone else’s business. They argue that they not only have the right to stick their noses into other people’s business, but that the government has the right to interfere in other people’s business when SoCons are too busy to do it, themselves. Sounds exactly like a buncha left-wingers, to me. It’s the same argument as lefties use, anyway… (You guys are working off the same fill-in-the-blank forms, aren’t you. The only thing that changes from their arguments to yours is the nouns, verbs and some of the adjectives.)

I thought only the left did that…you know, that tyranny of good intentions thing. You’re telling me that I don’t know what’s good for me, my family and my home. Only you know what’s best and only the government knows what’s best, but only if the government passes the laws that SoCons like and endorse. Then, on top of you telling me how to live, I gotta pay my taxes, sit down and shut up. ‘Cause I’m not smart enough to know what’s best for me and mine.

That’s all kinda like going to church, that is. One church has lots of free stuff, but it’s never really free. The other church has lots of freedom and liberty, but you never really get any freedom and liberty. Damned if they both don’t want lots of money out of my pocketbook, though. Just for the privilege of letting either or both of you tell me what to do in my own home.

The ‘tyranny of the majority’ and ‘the tyranny of good intentions’ labels fits both parties equally…and all too well, I’m afraid.

Both sides claim to be the party of freedom and liberty. If I’m a liberal, I’m not supposed to have conservative friends. If I’m a conservative, I can’t have liberal friends. One side tells me I can’t have a big gulp and the other tells me I can’t smoke a joint and both sides tell me I can’t smoke a cigarette. One side wants my guns while the other side tells me who I can and can’t have sex with. The government tells me to be prepared for disasters but it also tells me that I’m a terrorist when I do prepare for disasters. On and on and on with that sort of craziness from all of ya.

You’re all nuts. Ya know that don’t ya? ‘Cause none of ya are making any damned sense at all.

My view of the SocCons is they are just like the Progressives except they have different lists of the forbidden and mandatory.

If loving Liberty and preferring government be limited by The Constitution makes me a hedonist or anything else you want to call me, I wear that title as a badge of honor, and thank you for awarding it to me.

Don’t like same sex marriage, marry someone of the opposite sex. Problem solved.

If loving Liberty and preferring government be limited by The Constitution makes me a hedonist or anything else you want to call me, I wear that title as a badge of honor, and thank you for awarding it to me.

Don’t like same sex marriage, marry someone of the opposite sex. Problem solved.

How does supporting same-sex marriage have anything to do with “loving the Constitution?” The two have nothing to do with each other—indeed, since the advocates of same-sex marriage are committed to gutting Constitutional protections, supporting same-sex marriage is antithetical to the Constitution.

How does “loving Liberty” have anything to do with advocating same-sex marriage? Loving libertinism, maybe—”Liberty?” No.

“How does supporting same-sex marriage have anything to do with “loving the Constitution?”

You brought it up.

I just checked, The Constitution does not give the Government the right to regulate marriage nor does it say that Christianity informs the law making process in this land.

“How does “loving Liberty” have anything to do with advocating same-sex marriage? Loving libertinism, maybe—”Liberty?” No.”

If you don’t get that, you don’t get Liberty.

Liberty means leaving people alone to run their lives as they see fit. Even when they do stuff differently than you. You sound a lot like my Democrat friends who favor free speech as long as you agree with them, but otherwise expect you to shut up.

I really don’t think it is my or anyone elses’ business who marries whom. I also don’t care if people want to have polygamous marriage as long as they don’t want me to pay for it or have to do it myself.

You can’t have free speech unless you are willing to hear things you disagree with.

You can’t have Liberty unless you are willing to put up with people who behave differently than yourself.

Neither of those requires that we accept disorderly behavior in public.

I have my opinions yet manage to walk down the street without shouting them at passers by.

I manage to be a heterosexual without practicing it in public.

I expect the same from others, but that is different from telling them how to live their lives.

Well said, Old Guy. I don’t know where this Buzzsawmonkey is coming from but he sure sounds angry. I know several married (officially or not) gay couples and in every instance they seem remarkably bourgeois in their desires. (All work, etc.) They seem to be in rebellion or reaction or something to the old gay thing of being promiscuous. It’s almost as if they were envious of straight couples. Kind of stodgy, really. But I guess some people are all upset by this. Can’t figure out why. Maybe Buzzsawmonkey can tell us without reference to the Constitution and other glorious documents – just, you know, human.

1) I just checked, The Constitution does not give the Government the right to regulate marriage nor does it say that Christianity informs the law making process in this land.

2) Liberty means leaving people alone to run their lives as they see fit. Even when they do stuff differently than you. You sound a lot like my Democrat friends who favor free speech as long as you agree with them, but otherwise expect you to shut up.

3) I really don’t think it is my or anyone elses’ business who marries whom. I also don’t care if people want to have polygamous marriage as long as they don’t want me to pay for it or have to do it myself.

4) You can’t have free speech unless you are willing to hear things you disagree with.

5) You can’t have Liberty unless you are willing to put up with people who behave differently than yourself.

6) I manage to be a heterosexual without practicing it in public.

Let’s take these things by number, shall we? Maybe you can comprehend them, if you move your lips while you read.

1) I have said nothing whatsoever about “Christianity” here—nor, indeed, about any religion whatsoever. That you have shows you, ab initio, to be a bigot with preconceived notions. But being tolerant, I will ignore that, and instead point out that while the qualifications for a valid marriage are the province of the several states, the gay-rights movement, as I have pointed out extensively in #42 above, was designed from the beginning as a means to gut the First Amendment guarantees of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion, and has been far too successful thus far in doing so.

2) I have said nothing against anyone “doing” anything. People experiencing same-sex attraction can fuck their brains out, if they want to. Not my concern. But what the gay-rights lobby wants is legal protections—which is to say, privileges—for same-sex unions. That’s not a “liberty” issue; that’s a “gimme” issue. Despite the fact that it’s a “gimme” issue, most people, myself included, are more than willing to grant same-sex couples certain legal privileges—as long as those couples accept them as “civil unions” or “domestic partnership protection.” It is the gay-rights agitators who are insisting upon the magic word “marriage,” even when they are granted the privileges they claim to desire under the rubric of “civil unions.” That has nothing to do with “liberty,” and everything to do with the seeking of political power.

3) If you do not understand the problem that polygamous marriage poses, you are a fool—not only because, historically, Utah only was permitted to become a state when the Mormon Church officially abandoned its belief in polygamy, but because permitting polygamy poses a problem as regards Muslim immigration in the present day. More, opening the door to polygamy—to what is, in effect, an anything-goes view of marriage—opens the door to abolition of ages of consent, and to bestiality.

4) You say that “you can’t have free speech unless you are willing to hear things you disagree with.” Quite true. But I have said nothing against free speech of any kind. The gay-rights lobby, however, has been the greatest foe, for forty years, of free speech; it has been, and is, in the forefront of demanding that anything which opposes its political goals of the moment be dismissed as “hate speech” unworthy of answer. Furthermore, were it to—God forbid—be successful in making same-sex marriage the law of the land, it would set about repressing traditional religion as “hate speech” for having the temerity to teach that homosexual behavior was morally undesirable.

5) You say that “you can’t have Liberty unless you are willing to put up with people who behave differently than yourself.” Nobody has suggested this. It is a strawman. Nobody has suggested that the homosexually-inclined disappear, or that nobody “put up with” them. Refusing to grant legal sanction to a hitherto-unknown invention of a new kind of “marriage” is not the same thing as “not putting up with” people who choose to couple in unusual ways.

6) Your claim to “manage to be a heterosexual without practicing it in public” suggests, by its locution, that you are, in fact, a gay-rights activist engaging in subterfuge on this board—for if you are, indeed, heterosexual it is highly unlikely that you have never kissed or held hands with your significant other in public—if you have had one. For that matter, it is highly unlikely that you have never kissed or held hands with your significant other if that person is of the same sex, as seems probable (your entire line here is highly reminiscent of gay-rights lingo of about 30 years ago). Let us, however, take your “not practicing it in public” line and look at the gay-rights movement. The gay-rights movement is all about “practicing it in public.” Its parades, the Folsom Street Fair, yadda yadda, are all about taking the most outrageous sexual behavior and intentionally thrusting it in the faces of the populace at large, and daring the populace to object. Likewise, the agitation for same-sex “marriage” is all about “practicing in public,” for what is the entire enterprise but a demand for the larger society to validate the purely sexual behavior of a tiny minority?

You can’t argue for small and limited government on one hand, and then turn around and push for intrusive and authoritarian government on the other. It does not compute. At best you come off as confused and at worst you come off as dishonest, as someone who is trying to set people up for a bait and switch.

I’m sick and tired of having to tolerate social cons and their endless interference and attempts to insert irrelevant nonsense into our political platforms. I would like nothing more than for them to go off and form some party of their own so they can fight the good fight and get 1% of the vote just like the Libertarian party does. Get out of our hair and stop fowling our nest.

When it comes to the issue of abortion, the very best thing that social conservatives could possibly do is STOP TRYING TO HIJACK THE STATE and use it to OUTLAW abortion. If they truly cared about the sanctity of human life they would work to prevent unwanted pregnancies through community outreach and other private efforts. A woman who does not become pregnant with an unwanted child will not get an abortion. Let me repeat that: A woman who does not become pregnant with an unwanted child will not get an abortion. The abortion will never take place. It will be stopped by preventing the very reason that a woman would seek one out in the first place. This is something that so many people never stop to consider. If amputations are bad, which most people would agree that they are, but they can be prevented through various safety mechanisms that would prevent the sorts of injuries that lead to amputations, then support for these safety mechanisms would seem to be a no-brainer. Yet when it comes to abortion, this isn’t the case. If social cons really cared about preventing abortions, they would work to encourage both sexual responsibility (and I don’t mean that as a euphemism for abstinence) and the proper use of contraceptives. They’d work to encourage monogamy and teach the value and virtue of a relationship based on love and commitment. They’d have a message that wouldn’t be antagonistic and authoritarian. They’d actually try to make a difference by encouraging people to make GOOD choices ahead of time instead of trying to limit what choices are available to someone after they have made an AVOIDABLE mistake.

But they won’t, and if you try to talk to them about this they become irrationally angry and spiteful. Their communications eventually devolve into verbal attacks, all in the hope that you’ll just go away and be quiet. For them the fight against abortion is more important than the issue of abortion itself. A solution that does not involve them “winning” the fight against abortion is a solution that they reject. They’re like combatants in a generations long civil war, endlessly fighting an long-irrelevant conflict because doing so is the foundation of their society and culture, and without which they would lose their identity.

I’m sick and tired of the whole mess.

Gay marriage is an even more ludicrous issue. With abortion someone is dying. A human life is being snuffed out. In the case of gay marriage there is no existential moral issue. There is literally NOTHING to fuss about. Of course social cons want to believe there is because most of them are religious and their various religious traditions say that homosexuality is a grave sin. I’d quite willing to agree that PROMISCUOUS homosexuality is horribly wrong (AIDS didn’t spread itself after all). The thing is, MARRIAGE is the antonym of promiscuity. Wouldn’t it be wiser to encourage homosexual monogamy and perhaps have a guiding role and influence in the homosexual community? Encouraging a gay man to find an exclusive partner and avoid going to bath houses, rest stops, glory holes and the rest is a great way to both save and improve lives. But no, they won’t do that either because that would require too much independent thought.

I pick on social cons a lot, but I do understand that they are good people who merely want other people to also be good…according to their definition of virtue. Unfortunately they engage in the same coercive tactics that Progressives do. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between someone who is trying to ban plastic bags, outlaw smoking, and force other progressive nonsense down people’s throats and someone who is trying to get abortion outlawed, prevent the legal recognition of gay marriages, and in general being a socially conservative busybody. The ideas of each person may differ, but the emotional impetus behind the behaviors of both are the same. Both want to direct and control how other people live. They can ALL kiss my ass.

“But they won’t, and if you try to talk to them about this they become irrationally angry and spiteful. Their communications eventually devolve into verbal attacks, all in the hope that you’ll just go away and be quiet.”